Here are our picks for some of the best (and worst) moments in our city’s vibrant arts and culture scene, including our favorite exhibitions, festivals that were (and were not) successful, dance parties, and beloved bar/venue closures. Some of these picks might surprise you — and some won’t, like BOPA.
Best Art Exhibition: Joyce Scott: Walk a Mile in My Dreams at The Baltimore Museum of Art
This was the year of Joyce J. Scott, whose lustrous retrospective showcase, “Walk a Mile in my Dreams,” debuted at the Baltimore Museum of Art on March 24. Spanning the visual artist’s five-decade career, the exhibit embodied Scott’s ever-evolving signature style—often marked by the use of small, colorful beads—and singular essence through a range of bead-emblazoned, woven, wearable, and sculpted works, highlighting social justice as the throughline in her repertoire. While we were sad to see it leave the BMA over the summer, we were absolutely dazzled when Scott lent her vocal stylings to a host of jazzy numbers during a small closing performance.
Best Concert Cameo: Barack and Michelle Obama with Stevie Wonder
On October 15, to the delight of concertgoers at CFG Bank Arena, Stevie Wonder was accompanied onstage by two extremely special guests: the former president and first lady. Fans were floored to see the “Superstition” singer joined by Barack and Michelle Obama, who encouraged the audience to vote in the upcoming presidential election. Rather fitting for a tour dubbed ‘Sing Your Song! As We Fix Our Nation’s Broken Heart.’
Best Commencement Speaker: Stevie Wonder (again) at Johns Hopkins University
Graduation festivities are full of excitement. This rang especially true for Johns Hopkins University graduates during a university-wide commencement ceremony on May 24. After receiving his own honorary degree from the university, Stevie Wonder wooed the crowd with a surprise performance featuring a medley of his greatest hits.
Best Festival: Shiny Fest
Hosted by local record label Shiny Boy Press, this carnival-style arts and culture festival—held this year on Sept. 7 at The Ottobar in Remington—was quintessential Smaltimore. While tossing bright balloons and sipping Natty Bohs, attendees danced to local acts including SLOT, and Mowder Oyal. Clowns manned the downstairs merch tables and twisted balloon animals while local goods—and shawarma eats—were sold outside. Like Shiny Boy co-founder Collin Schnikter hoped, the whole thing felt like one big “family barbecue.”
Best Theatre Performance: Everyman Theatre’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
The whimsical set and sound design for this Shakespearean play transported the audience through time and space with details reminiscent of an 80s John Hughes film. The play ran from May 12 to June 4. It was directed by Associate Artistic Director Noah Himmelstein and adapted by Gavin Witt.
“The creatives have outdone themselves,” wrote Lynne Menefee in her MD Theatre Guide review. “The gorgeous costumes by David Burdick are a hybrid of the bright, electric colors of the 80s and styles of the 70s, including flowery prints, macramé vests, and bellbottoms for the Rude Mechanicals and Tatiana’s fairies-in waiting.
Every detail—lighting, costuming, set design, and direction—was exceptional. Kudos to Everyman for a triumphant performance.
Best Short Film Festival: Fresh Black Films (North) from Luminal Theatre
On August 15, Luminal Theater, a nomadic microcinema that specializes in making Black art accessible, made a stop in Baltimore to showcase the work of local Black filmmakers. The screening event introduced works from artists across the city, like Sha-Shonna Rogers, Britt Sankofa, and Victor Armani, that interrogated gender, culture, and belonging. An extra shoutout to Oreoluwa Akinyode whose film “Shining in Plain Sight” won the audience award for best film.
Most Enduring Shit Show: Baltimore Office for the Promotion of the Arts
At a June 7 press conference held at City Hall to announce the artists who would headline this year’s Artscape, Mayor Brandon Scott described his relationship with then-CEO Rachel Graham as “lovely.”
By mid-November, however, Graham was out as the head of the beleaguered nonprofit that offers arts and artist support and organizes city events like the annual Martin Luther King Day parade, Artscape, and the Baltimore Farmers Market. The move came after the group announced in September that they had run out of money. Graham and Scott engaged in a public spat (one that gave us deja vu since the last person to lead BOPA had also argued publicly with the mayor), after which Scott announced that the city would be ending its contract with BOPA.
“The financially embattled nonprofit received most of its $4.7 million budget from the city, and Scott previously acknowledged that ending the city’s relationship with the group would be ‘an intricate process’ that would require close coordination,” wrote the Baltimore Banner.
In a piece we published in July, Graham said she had high hopes for the organization and wanted to make it one that met the needs of the whole city. She only served in the job for seven months.
Worst Take: Maryland Film Festival Founder Jed Dietz
Back in May, when Baltimore Sun reporters were allowed to write arts features, the newspaper published a story about the future of The Parkway Theatre. The Station North venue was renovated in 2017 but has been in rough financial shape since.
Jed Dietz, the founding director of the Maryland Film Festival who was also a major player in the purchase and renovation of the theater, sang a familiar song. One that relied on crime and fear as an explanation for the theater’s failure to thrive.
“The neighborhood is a real problem,” he’s quoted as saying. “We know there is a sense of fear about visiting the city in general from people living in surrounding communities.”
The problem is that The Charles Theater, located around the corner from the Parkway, is doing just fine.
The Maryland Film Festival took place this year in the neighborhood that Dietz disparaged. It was vibrant, exciting, and teeming with people – some of whom live here in Baltimore and others who came from elsewhere to enjoy the event. Everyone had a good time.
We think the Parkway is a beautiful space and we wish the best for it — and that includes leadership that values both what it is and where it is located.
Best Gallery Exhibition: Moon in Scorpio: by Megan Lewis at Galerie Myrtis
This past June, you only had to visit Galerie Myrtis in Old Goucher to be plunged into a vibrant, dazzling, and very Black world created inside Baltimore artist Megan Lewis’ oil paintings. In the works on display in Moon in Scorpio, which was on view from May 11 to June 20, Lewis said she was attempting to dive deep into the emotional inner world of her mostly male subjects.
She told Angela N. Carroll, who interviewed her for Baltimore Beat, that she looks to her father for inspiration. She is also inspired by the people she sees as she lives her life here in Baltimore.
“The criteria for who draws her attention is wholly intuitive: something about the stance or eyes, a dark-hued complexion, or a confident swag that compels her to immortalize their likeness on canvas,” Carroll wrote about Lewis and the exhibition. “She approaches their portraits with care. They are dreamy riffs, meta-ruminations that reflect Black lives in Baltimore City.”
Best Set Design/Casting: Theater of Body Positivity in “I Will Eat You Alive”
Culturally, a lot of this year felt like a time warp in the worst way. That included popular jokes about diabetes drugs like Ozempic, wide swaths of online influencers embracing the nothing-tastes-as-good-as-skinny-feels vibe of the 90s, and, as some plus-size influencers have pointed out, a dearth of attractive plus-size offerings online and IRL. Not that fatphobia ever truly went away. Enter Katie Hileman’s “I Will Eat You Alive,” which was performed live Jan. 25 through Feb. 10 at The Voxel.
The play is set at a dinner party attended by three fat women and held to mark one’s decision to lose weight.
“I am always interested in shows and media that center on fat individuals because they rarely exist without making fat people the subject of ridicule or shame,” wrote S. Ireti, who reviewed the play for us in March. “This play takes those tropes and plays with them in an off-kilter way. On opening night, I watched people around me be moved to tears.”
Best Dance Party: JaySwann’s Garden Hours
DJ/Producer JaySwann’s Garden Hours—an every-other-week gathering that’s part party, part artist’s residency—is now in its second year. Held from May through October, this gathering is a place to see and be seen if you’re a young creative in Baltimore. It’s held in Current Space’s lush outdoor Garden Bar during the warm months of May through October. Each Garden Hours begins with a set from JaySwann, before transitioning to a different guest DJ. Kotic Couture, S.DOT, Kade Young, Cadeem LaMarr, have all been guest selectors.
It felt good to have a gathering place to dance, grab food and drink specials, and shake away the stress of the week—especially one that’s free.
The Garden Hours finale was a pure spectacle. The space was transformed into a vibrant, bustling hub of activity. We’ve seen dogs, people on stilts, and people from every version of Baltimore City gathering in Current Space’s backyard oasis, united by a love of music and dancing.
Best Place To Start Your Fitness Journey: MV Fitness
Stepping into MV Fitness for the first time is a surreal experience. If you close your eyes and visualize what a gym looks like, it would pale in comparison to the space. It is a repurposed elegant venue with stained glass windows, chandeliers, and marble fireplaces.
But don’t let the gym’s gorgeous aesthetic quality fool you. MV Fitness is the place to get a severe and rigorous workout, but it is also not intimidating. MV Fitness offers relatively inexpensive memberships, class passes, and fitness classes every day. Spin on Saturdays at 9:00 a.m. with Teresa; her global soundtrack is the best way to start your weekend with purpose.
The club is small, but that means that it becomes familiar; MV Fitness is a Black-owned gym by Guy Cragwell, who greets members by name. There is every type of equipment you might need on two floors.
You can purchase month-to-month memberships and discounted group personal training classes. This way, you can get a head start on everyone starting their new resolution in 2025.
The Ladies First Award: Female Emcees
“We are living through a golden era of women in hip-hop,” Eze Jackson wrote in a piece we published in May on Black woman rappers in Baltimore. He reminded us that it was Megan Thee Stallion, not Kendrick Lamar, who took the first shot at Drake and his alleged body modification work.
The 8×10 in Federal Hill has been home to “Hip Hop at 8×10” series for some time, but an all-woman bill on April 12 drew a larger crowd than usual. For most of the history of Hip Hop, men have dominated the spotlight.
“The culture right now is very female-driven,” RegE.ruckuS, who organized the event with Sistah Dee, told Jackson.
Worst RIP: The Closure of The Crown
The Crown was never quite the same after the pandemic.
Divided initially between the red room and the blue room, visitors could stumble drunkenly across the seemingly unstable wooden floor from one room to the next, where two distinct offerings of music would be happening. A packed DJ night would be in one room, while a comedy night would happen next door, and a band would be playing downstairs.
The Crown was a space that was a nucleus for the art community in Station North, but after it reopened, it was different. The walls that divided the blue and red rooms were torn down, and one unified room was created.
But wasn’t the whole world different post-pandemic? Didn’t we all shift in unexpected ways? In August, a vague IG post announced the beloved venue would be closing permanently. Soon, we were all mourning the space where so many talented rappers, singers, performers, DJs, and photographers got their start.
“The Crown was a staple in the club scene in Baltimore and was shaped by its community,” Sydney J. Allen, the resident photographer for VERSION, wrote for Baltimore Beat.
There is a noticeable void without it and without Tony at the front door, asking for your ID.
Best Culture Keeper: I.H. Webster III
This year, we collaborated with visual artist and archivist I.H. Webster III twice: once to publish pictures from Artscapes past and once to publish photos of Baltimore Christmas celebrations from over 70 years ago. Webster is the force behind the I. Henry Photo Project—a digital archive of images shot by his grandfather, I. Henry Phillips Sr.; his father, I. Henry Phillips Jr.; and himself.
These photos highlight the beauty in the everyday, which is really what makes Baltimore so special. We are grateful to Webster that he is so eager to share his father and grandfather’s work with all of us.
Best Resurrection: Mobtown Ballroom
In January, Mobtown Ballroom, a dance venue known for its swing dance nights and plethora of diverse shows, made Station North its new home. Mobtown acquired the old North Avenue Market space on the corner of North & Maryland right as the historic Joe Squared was closing across the street. Not only did they slightly raise the main floor, turning the bar/kitchen area into more of a pit, but the pit serves healthy food options and a great remote working atmosphere with friendly baristas during the day. Never straying away from their love of nightlife, events happen on a smooth wooden floor with an updated, state-of-the-art sound system courtesy of The Crown, a legendary Station North venue that also recently closed.
Best Pivot: Eze Jackson’s Artscape After Party
Eze Jackson’s Artscape After Party returned for the first time since 2019. An unexpected storm that caused flooding and outages throughout the city forced BOPA to call off all Saturday evening programming, including a main-stage performance by Chaka Khan. Jackson’s After Party went on as scheduled right as the storm passed. Hosted by Larry Whaddup, the lineup of DJ KeeBee, Nature Boi, Mighty Mark & Petty Penguin (who also premiered a new song “It’s Up” featuring Jackson as he closed his set) gave folks a backup plan to come out and still enjoy Artscape as the storm passed ushering in an unforgettably cool summer night.
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