The Arts in Baltimore

From the visual to the performing arts, the Baltimore art scene is vibrant and ever-changing.

At the Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland’s largest art museum, you’ll find the famous Cone Collection, including treasures by Picasso, van Gogh and Matisse. It also has the second largest private collection of Andy Warhols’ works.

Tour the Walters Art Museum, featuring more than 30,000 works of art. From Egyptian artifacts to medieval armor, the museum’s exhibits span 55 centuries and five continents. The Hackerman House, an 1850s mansion adjoining the museum, houses the museum’s vast Asian collection.

For a more offbeat experience, American Visionary Art Museum and educational center features imaginative creations by intuitive and self-taught artists. It was ranked as the fourth best museum in the country by Travel & Leisure Magazine.

Music lovers, too, will find an array of things to do in Baltimore. Catch a performance of the Baltimore Opera Company at the Lyric Opera House. The company produces fully staged grand operas, featuring global talent and performed in the original language, with English subtitles.

See the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. The internationally acclaimed BSO performs 200 concerts a year, from classical to pops concerts.

If you’re a jazz fan, you won’t want to miss the Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute and Cultural Center. The center depicts the life and works of Maryland’s jazz greats, along with famous ragtime artist Eubie Blake.

Theater connoisseurs have it made in Baltimore. The Morris A. Mechanic Theatre is home to an array of Broadway shows, from touring musicals to dramas and dance performances.

Center Stage, hailed by Time Magazine as “a regional theater of the first rank,” offers bold productions — from Shakespeare to August Wilson — in two state-of-the-art theaters.

The Vagabond Players in Fell’s Point is one of the oldest theaters in America, while the city’s newest performing space, the Chesapeake Arts Center in Brooklyn Park, offers a variety of shows, exhibits and classes.

Arena Players, founded in 1953, is the nation’s oldest continuously operating African-American community theater. The company produces five main-stage productions each year, from classic to contemporary works, and also hosts a monthly live jazz show and comedy show.

Everyman Theater, a repertory company of artists from the Baltimore-Washington area, presents quality, accessible theater, while Run of the Mill Theater brings new plays and unpublished scripts to stages throughout the city.

Catch a performance on Baltimore’s West Side in the new France-Merrick Performing Arts Center, created from three historic landmark buildings including the original Hippodrome Theater. This world-class venue features touring Broadway shows and the best of the performing arts.

In the summer, Harborplace Ampitheatre is the setting for free concerts — from rock, pop, and progressive bands to big band, jazz, swing, pops, and even patriotic music. In July, the city celebrates its artists with Artscape — a three-day festival of gallery shows, poetry readings, street theater and musical performances.

If you’re drawn to the big screen, you’ll delight in the spring’s Maryland Film Festival, a dynamic program of movies shown throughout town, including the time-honored Senator Theater and the newly revamped Charles Theater.

Baltimore’s Little Italy is the setting for the nationally recognized Italian Film Festival, held outdoors in the summer months with live music and refreshments.