When I look at art, my mind wanders through connections: the words of a poem I thought were lost in the recesses of my mind, a song I practiced for hours on the piano when I was 12, a painting I just saw in another gallery, the television show I watched last night. I know this experience is not unique to me, so when I create content for the BMA’s mobile guide, Go Mobile, I dive into these webs of association and search for the most curious and delightful stories I can find for each artwork.

The stories tend to come from a hunch, a side comment made by a curator or a surprising vignette from an online article. It will pique my interest and send me searching through archival holdings of letters and photographs, calling up strangers around the country who might have known the artists or the people depicted in portraits, and talking to local artists and artisans about techniques and materials. I then work with BMA educators and curators to identify interviewees whose expertise will best bring those stories to life and inspire visitors to look closely at the artworks while noticing things they may have originally overlooked.

Imagine walking through the BMA’s American Art galleries and stopping to read the label for a small vase made using a “patented” technique. Or perhaps you’re curious about a beautiful American Impressionist still life painting of roses that look as though they are wilted. By picking up your smartphone or tablet and opening Go Mobile, you can search for these objects to learn about the patent filed by the artist in 1878 for his “Lava Glass” technique and about a particular variety of rose that gently bows its blossoms toward the ground, even when they are fresh.

Launched in 2012, Go Mobile now has content for more than 100 artworks on view in the BMA’s Contemporary and American Wings—as well as the newly renovated and expanded galleries for African and Asian art opening on April 26.  

What’s cool about Go Mobile is you can access all of this information with your smartphone or one of the BMA’s complimentary iPod Touches. Within the app you can submerse yourself in the art through audio interviews with curators, artists, conservators, and historians, as well as video clips of artists demonstrating their techniques, images of comparative artworks, and photographs that relate the artworks to the world around us. Explore these objects on your devices at home or in the galleries. You can also bookmark your favorites and share them with friends and family on Faceboook and Twitter.

This fall, we’ll premiere some exciting new features including tours created by special guests from around Baltimore. Until then, here are some of my favorite stops:

 

Artist in Greenland by Rockwell Kent (1935-1960) and Ice Bowl and Spoon by Gorham Manufacturing Company (1870-1872)

These artworks explore the stark beauty of the North, a blue land of impossible cold and rare beasts. Kent took a very macho approach to life and art, as suggested by the photos of him gnawing at raw animal flesh and posing with a spear. As a survivalist in the harshest of climates, he was able to create artworks that transport viewers to a world most of us will never see with our own eyes. This Ice Bowl allowed Americans fascinated with the North to bring a representation of an iceberg from the newly acquired Alaska into their own homes, fill it with ice, and watch polar bears prowl across its peaks as condensation dripped from its icicles. Go Mobile includes a video of Baltimore silversmith Henry Hopkins III speaking about the extreme skill needed to produce such an intricate work of art.

 

Mantel Clock by Jacques Nicolas Pierre François Dubuc (c. 1815)

This two-century-old clock has not told the time in years, at least since it was acquired by the BMA in 1994. On Go Mobile you have the opportunity to hear its gentle tick-tocking and cheerful chime thanks to a dedicated conservator who discovered that it could still be wound and the hammer would strike the bell if held just so.

 

Ifa Divination Bowl by Duga Workshop, Yoruba Region, Nigeria

This expertly carved bowl is an important tool that would have been used in divination by a Yoruba priest. We interviewed just such a priest, Ifakunle Odotolo, who described the divination ritual that uses sacred palm nuts in the bowl.

 

Strange Fruit by Alison Saar (1995)

In the stop for this powerful sculpture of a female figure bound at the ankles and dangling from the ceiling by a thick rope, you’ll find rich audio and video exploring how it connects to the history of lynching in the American South, how Saar was evoking African Nkisi figures that contain power centers filled with earth and leaves, and how the image of the body in this artwork relates to other depictions in the galleries.

 

 

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Be sure to check out the Go Mobile features at this weekend’s event: African Art Celebration

Join us on Sunday, April 26 for the African Art Celebration, a day-long celebration of the reopening of the BMA’s expanded and beautifully reinstalled galleries for African art. Enjoy musical performances, art-making, storytelling, and more. FREE FOR ALL!

 

The celebration includes:

• Morning performances on the historic front steps by the youth group Dancing Many Drums and the African dance group Coyaba Dance Theater
• Films by African directors from the African Film Festival National Traveling Series
• Musical performances by Elikeh and Amadou Kouyate
• Artist demonstrations of indigo dyeing and Zulu beading
• Storytelling with Maria Broom and Jali-D
• Make your own masks and musical instruments inspired by the museum’s collection
• A hands-on Egyptian music workshop