BmoreArt’s Picks: April 15-21This Week: Tomashi Jackson and Nia Evans at UMBC CADVC, Strong, Bright, Useful True exhibition opens at JHU Bloomberg Frary Gallery, GBCA Happy Hour honoring Carla Du Pree at The Peale, artist talk with Jonna McKone and Elena Volkova at BmoreArt Connect + Collect, reception for Soledad Salamé at Goya Contemporary, ‘Confluences’ performance at Creative Alliance, Out of the Woodwork closing reception at Eubie Blake, receptions for 2025 Baker Artist Award Finalists + Rachel Hayden at Current Space, and the Sondheim Finalists exhibition opens at The Walters — PLUS apply for the Trawick Price and more feature opportunities!BmoreArt’s Picks presents the best weekly art openings, events, and performances happening in Baltimore and surrounding areas. For a more comprehensive perspective, check the BmoreArt Calendar page, which includes ongoing exhibits and performances, and is updated on a daily basis.To submit your calendar event, email us at events@bmoreart.com!Image: Tomashi Jackson visits CADVC for a public program in Spring 2024, with an image of Nia Evans projected on screen in the background. Photo by Tedd Henn.Tomashi Jackson and Nia Evans: “Pedagogy Study Hall” — Education history and policyTuesday, April 15 :: 6-7pm@ UMBC CADVC The Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture (CADVC) hosts an Exploratory Research Residency that invites artists and interdisciplinary collaborators to take advantage of scholarly resources and to build partnerships at UMBC and in the Baltimore region. In 2025, CADVC hosts Tomashi Jackson’s “Pedagogy Study Hall” project as part of this program.In collaboration with policy analyst and economic advocate Nia Evans, Tomashi Jackson’s “Pedagogy Study Hall” project will host a series of intermedia series of public discussions about investment and disinvestment in the arts and humanities, looking to Baltimore as a critical case study in grassroots organizing in a system of gross structural inequity.Baltimore offers a critical forum for exploring a range of formal and informal organizational approaches to arts education and community development through the arts. It also provides an important model for exploring informal cultural economies that support local art education and production in the interstitials between, and in the absence of, major financial investment.April 15, online, 6–7 p.m.: Panel on education history and policy with Davarian Baldwin and Matt Cregor.Admission is free, and reservations are required.Joyce J. Scott, Ancestry Doll 1 (2011), Beads, African sculpture (Ghana), Japanese-made figurines, thread, and fabric, image courtesy of the artist.Strong, Bright, Useful True: Recent Acquisitions and Contemporary Art from BaltimoreTuesday, April 15 | Ongoing through September 6@ JHU Bloomberg Center Irene and Richard Frary GalleryThis spring, Derrick Adams, Jerrell Gibbs, Joyce J. Scott, and other contemporary Baltimore artists shaping the national and global arts landscape will be featured in Strong, Bright, Useful True: Recent Acquisitions and Contemporary Art from Baltimore at the Irene and Richard Frary Gallery at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C. Strong, Bright, Useful True features a selection of new acquisitions made through the Johns Hopkins University Art Collecting Committee, which includes faculty, staff and students, in collaboration with BmoreArt Connect + Collect. These new acquisitions will be shown alongside works from the campus collection at Hopkins. On view April 15 through September 6, 2025, the exhibition illustrates the vibrancy of Baltimore’s contemporary art scene and the University’s longstanding commitment to elevating creative culture in and around the region, including through its acquisition efforts. Showcasing a broad spectrum of media—including painting, sculpture, time-based media, and photography—Strong, Bright, Useful True includes works by globally recognized and emergent artists such as Adams, Gibbs, and Scott, as well as Nakeya Brown, Se Jong Cho, Brandon Donahue-Shipp, Oletha DeVane, Erin Fostel, Phaan Howng, Kei Ito, Linling Lu, Edgar Reyes, Soledad Salamé, Bria Sterling-Wilson, and René Treviño. The exhibition’s title is inspired by the inaugural address of the first Johns Hopkins University president Daniel Gilman, who in 1876 proclaimed Hopkins’ simple aim “… to make scholars strong, bright, useful, and true.”“This exhibition represents our mission at Johns Hopkins to build bridges between the broader Baltimore and Washington, D.C. communities through programming at the nexus of art, culture and policy,” said Cybele Bjorklund, executive director of the Hopkins Bloomberg Center. “The Hopkins Bloomberg Center provides a phenomenal platform to amplify the contributions of Baltimore artists to the country through their thought-provoking work.”“Visitors to the exhibition will experience works from today’s leading artists who work and live in Baltimore, as well as opportunities to discover the city’s emerging artists who are already starting to be represented by blue chip galleries and within the collections of major art institutions worldwide,” said Caitlin Berry, director of the Irene and Richard Frary Gallery. “Johns Hopkins’ stewardship of Baltimore artists across a broad range of perspectives, artistic traditions, and disciplines tells a multigenerational story about one of the most vital and energetic artistic communities in the country. The exhibition expands upon this narrative by revealing the profound impact the city has as a major incubator of innovation and creative expression on the national and international stage.”Exhibition highlights include Derrick Adams’ Interior Life (Woman) and Interior Life (Man) (2019), part of his 2019 series “Deconstruction Workers”; Brandon Donahue-Shipp’s Basketball Bloom (Spectrum) (2024), which emphasizes community and place, two themes that are central to the exhibition; and Phaan Howng’s Monstera Mash (2024), which focuses on ecological stewardship.Strong, Bright, Useful True is the first presentation of contemporary artwork at the Irene and Richard Frary Gallery, which was inaugurated in October 2024. While advance reservations are requested, admission to the gallery is free and open to the public.GBCA April Happy HourWednesday, April 16 :: 5-7pm@ The PealeJoin GBCA, and leaders of the arts community to celebrate and honor Carla Du Pree, Executive Director of CityLit Project, with the 2025 Cultural Innovator Award. She is a passionate writer, stalwart leader, and pillar in the Baltimore literary community. This special GBCA Happy Hour Celebration is on Wednesday, April 16th at 5:00pm at The Peale.Event details are as follows:Wednesday, April 16th 20255:00pm – 7:00pmThe Peale225 Holliday St, Baltimore, MD 21202Read more of this week’s picks at BmoreArt. ...read more read less