Past Exhibitions
Visit your favorite Walters' exhibitions again, or discover a new show you may have missed.
- Diadem and Dagger: Jewish Silversmiths of Yemen
- Saturday, October 27, 2012–Monday, January 21, 2013
- This focus show of approximately 25 objects introduces Yemeni-Jewish silverwork from the Zucker Family Trust collection. Yemeni-Jewish craftsmen produced beautiful silver pieces characterized by elaborate granulation and filigree decoration for Muslim and Jew alike.
- Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe
- Sunday, October 14, 2012–Monday, January 21, 2013
- This groundbreaking exhibition will explore the wealth of European art to reveal the hidden presence of Africans in Renaissance society and the many roles they played. The portraits at the core of this show provide a window on an unsuspected facet of a society deeply impacted by the expanding worldview of the Age of Exploration.
- Student Response Show: Facing Our Community
- Saturday, September 15, 2012–Sunday, February 03, 2013
- Facing Our Community is a small exhibition of artwork created by Maryland middle and high school students in response to the Walters Art Museum’s special exhibition Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe.
- The Two Planets - Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook
- Saturday, August 11, 2012–Sunday, November 18, 2012
- In the short film vignettes of The Two Planets (Dow Song Duang), the farmers of small Thai villages discuss several classic works of modern European painting while artist Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook fixes her camera on them.
- Paradise Imagined: The Garden in the Islamic and Christian World
- Saturday, June 30, 2012–Sunday, September 23, 2012
- This exhibition explores the art of gardens and the cross-fertilization of garden imagery between the East and West. Gardens have functioned as spaces of invention, imagination and myth-making, as well as places of repose and recreation, for different cultures across time.
- Public Property
- Sunday, June 17, 2012–Sunday, August 19, 2012
- This summer, we’re holding a participatory exhibition, created collectively by the public. You get to decide what the exhibition will be. We will invite your opinion on a number of decisions. Then, visit the museum this summer when Public Property opens and continue to contribute to, and change, this public exhibition.
- Doodle 4 Google
- Wednesday, May 23, 2012–Sunday, June 24, 2012
- Doodle 4 Google is a nationwide contest that asks K–12 students to redesign Google’s homepage banner around the theme “if I could travel in time, I’d visit…” The top ten winning Doodles from Maryland will be on display at the Walters Art Museum from May 23 through June 24.
- Hashiguchi Goyo's Beautiful Women
- Saturday, May 19, 2012–Sunday, August 12, 2012
- Through just a handful of images, Hashiguchi Goyo, the last of Japan's great ukiyo-e printmakers, captured the spirit and the dynamic visual character of the pre-war era. Between 1918 and his death in 1920, Goyo oversaw the production of just 13 prints. Of these, eight were images of beautiful women.
- Near Paris: The Watercolors of Léon Bonvin
- Saturday, February 25, 2012–Sunday, May 20, 2012
- Highly detailed and original, Léon Bonvin's watercolors of flowers, landscapes and moonlit scenes represent a distinctive contribution to the realist movement in mid-19th century France.
- Exploring Art of the Ancient Americas: The John Bourne Collection Gift
- Sunday, February 12, 2012–Sunday, May 20, 2012
- This exhibition will feature 129 Precolumbian artworks from Mexico to Peru. Organized thematically by culture, the artworks present more than 2,500 years of creativity in Mexico, Central America and Andean South America from 1200 B.C. to A.D. 1520.
- Thai Story: The Vessantara Jataka
- Saturday, October 29, 2011–Sunday, January 22, 2012
- Twelve paintings illustrating the jataka story of Prince Vessantara extol the virtue of unlimited charity. In this painting cycle, the prince, an embodiment of the Buddha-to-be, casts off his elephant, his land, his palace, his garments, his children, his wife, etc. until he has given all that can be given. His charity is limitless, and this attracts the attention of the divine.
- Lost and Found: The Secrets of Archimedes
- Sunday, October 16, 2011–Sunday, January 01, 2012
- LOST for centuries. FOUND by the Walters Art Museum. Discover how an international team of experts resurrected the hidden manuscript of the ancient world's greatest thinker, Archimedes of Syracuse.
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- Puzzles of the Brain: An Artist's Journey through Amnesia
- Saturday, September 17, 2011–Sunday, December 11, 2011
- The Walters will partner with the Cognitive Science Department in the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts & Science at The Johns Hopkins University in an innovative focus show exploring the impact of severe brain damage on an artist.
- The Art of the Writing Instrument from Paris to Persia
- Saturday, July 02, 2011–Sunday, September 25, 2011
- Every culture that values the art of writing has found ways to reflect the prestige and pleasure of writing through beautiful tools. Once owned by statesmen, calligraphers, wealthy merchants and women of fashion, these stunning objects highlight the ingenuity of the artists who created them and underline the centrality of the written word in diverse cultures.
- Setting Sail: Drawings of the Sea from the Walters' Collection
- Saturday, June 18, 2011–Sunday, September 11, 2011
- This show focuses on drawings, prints and watercolors of ships, sailors and the sea from the permanent collection of the Walters Art Museum. Life on shipboard and on shore are shown in a variety of graphic media.
- Realistic Perfection: The Making of Oriental Ceramic Art
- Saturday, March 12, 2011–Saturday, June 04, 2011
- This show will showcase a unique series of progressive proofs illustrating the exacting technique used to create the prints bound into an important early catalog, "Oriental Ceramic Art".
- Relics and Reliquaries Reconsidered
- Saturday, February 26, 2011–Sunday, May 22, 2011
- Eleven emerging MICA artists will mine the cross-cultural and historic conceptions of what a reliquary is or can be. Their artworks reflect myriad approaches to the history of reliquary traditions and the sacred interpreted in a contemporary context.
- Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe
- Sunday, February 13, 2011–Sunday, May 15, 2011
- Medieval Christians venerated saints; their bodily remains were often displayed in special containers, known as reliquaries. Covered in gold and silver and embellished with gems and semiprecious stones, reliquaries proclaimed the special status of their sacred contents to worshipers and pilgrims.
- German Drawings from the Walters' Collection
- Saturday, November 20, 2010–Sunday, February 13, 2011
- These German drawings from the mid-19th century are notable for their clear storytelling, appealing subject matter and precise draftsmanship. William Walters purchased most of the works in this exhibition during his time in Europe. Highlights include picturesque landscapes, charming animal studies and incisive character sketches.
- Walter Wick: Games, Gizmos and Toys in the Attic
- Sunday, September 19, 2010–Sunday, January 02, 2011
- The Walters celebrates the creative mind of renowned artist and children's book illustrator Walter Wick, whose I Spy and Can You See What I See? books have been read and loved by millions of children and adults around the world.
- Great Illustrations: Drawings and Books from The Walters’ Collection
- Saturday, July 31, 2010–Sunday, October 24, 2010
- This focus show unearths treasures of illustration hidden in the permanent collection of the Walters Art Museum. Featuring preparatory drawings for Gustave Doré’s Bible and Paul Gavarni’s lively sketches of the London underworld, the exhibition explores the variety of ways in which 19th-century artists approached the art of illustration.
- Checkmate! Medieval People at Play
- Saturday, July 17, 2010–Sunday, October 10, 2010
- Neither stodgy nor perpetually pious, medieval people found time for amusement in the margins of their lives and their manuscripts. From peasant boys shirking their winter duties in order to lob snowballs at each other to monkeys gleefully dancing to "Ring around the Rosie," their antics have come down to us in art.
- Bearing Witness: Work by Bradley McCallum & Jacqueline Tarry
- Saturday, May 08, 2010–Sunday, August 01, 2010
- Bearing Witness is a multi-venue survey of over ten years of work by the artist duo Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry. 8 larger-than-life mother-and-child portraits painted on silk are suspended from the ceiling in the Walters lobby.
- Japanese Cloisonné Enamels from the Stephen W. Fisher Collection
- Sunday, February 14, 2010–Sunday, June 13, 2010
- This exhibition celebrates the beauty and technical perfection of cloisonné enamels from Japan. The Stephen W. Fisher collection of Japanese cloisonné enamels is one of the finest in the world. Comprised largely of pieces created during Japan's "golden age" of decorative art production, this collection features many intricately adorned vases, boxes, and trays worked in gold, silver, and dazzling colored enamels.
- Beauty and the Brain: A Neural Approach to Aesthetics
- Saturday, January 23, 2010–Sunday, April 11, 2010
- This collaboration between the Walters Art Museum and the Zanvyl Krieger Mind-Brain Institute at The Johns Hopkins University is a pioneering study in neuroesthetics, a new approach to the neural basis of the aesthetic experience.
Beauty and the Brain is both an exhibition and an experiment.
- The Christmas Story: Picturing the Birth of Christ in Medieval Manuscripts
- Thursday, December 03, 2009–Sunday, February 28, 2010
- As it is recounted in the Christian New Testament, the Christmas story is remarkably short on specifics. In rendering the story into pictures, it fell to medieval illuminators to supply the details. Even today, popular representations of these events are based on images that were first devised by the artists of the Middle Ages.
- Desire. Destruction. Transcendence
- Saturday, October 31, 2009–Sunday, December 13, 2009
- Amita Bhatt is an Indian-American artist based on the East Coast of the United States. Ms. Bhatt's paintings explore a variety of ideas through the metaphors of tantric thought. These large-format paintings reinvent traditional Indian symbolism. Here they are installed in dialog with traditional tantric works of art drawn from the collection of John and Berthe Ford.
- Heroes: Mortals and Myths in Ancient Greece
- Sunday, October 11, 2009–Sunday, January 03, 2010
- This exhibition explores the human need for heroes through the arts of ancient Greece. Statues, reliefs, vases, bronzes and jewelry illustrate the lives of heroes and heroines, including their tasks, adversaries, challenges, failures and private moments. The exhibition features over 100 objects from U.S. and European museums as well as pieces from the Walters' collection.
- Art On Purpose: Heroes in Our Midst
- Wednesday, September 16, 2009–Sunday, January 03, 2010
- Inspired by the Walters Art Museum's Heroes exhibition and its emphasis on the myths of Herakles, Odysseus, Achilles and Helen, Art on Purpose presents Heroes in Our Midst, a project
about modern-day Baltimore individuals who share attributes with the ancient Greek heroes highlighted in the Walters' exhibition.
- Shrunken Treasures: Miniaturization in Books and Art
- Saturday, August 15, 2009–Sunday, November 08, 2009
- Miniature books have delighted and fascinated readers for centuries and continue to be avidly collected today. This exhibition will highlight over 30 small-scale manuscripts and rare books from the Walters' collection, ranging from religious texts, such as the Books of Hours and Korans, to almanacs and books of poetry.
- Herman Maril: An American Modernist
- Sunday, June 28, 2009–Sunday, August 30, 2009
- The Walters will present this exhibition of paintings by Baltimore artist Herman Maril (1908-86).
- Prayers in Code
- Saturday, April 25, 2009–Sunday, July 19, 2009
- This Manuscript Gallery focus show presents a selection of unusual Books of Hours and explores artistic patronage at the court of King Francis I (1494-1547).
- Rembrandt Peale's Portrait of John Meer
- Wednesday, March 04, 2009–Sunday, August 23, 2009
- Rembrandt Peale's Portrait of John Meer: A New Addition to the American Art Collection
March 4?August 23, 2009
- The Saint John's Bible
- Sunday, February 15, 2009–Sunday, May 24, 2009
- This exhibition features 22 bifolio openings from two new volumes of the Saint John's Bible, along with specially selected manuscripts and objects from the Walters collection.
- The Romance of the Rose
- Saturday, January 24, 2009–Sunday, April 19, 2009
- Romance will be in the air at the Walters Art Museum this winter when Romance of the Rose: Visions of Love in Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts opens in January. The exhibition features lavishly illuminated copies of the Romance of the Rose, a book-length poem from the 13th century written in Old French.
- Portraits Re/Examined: A Dawoud Bey Project
- Saturday, December 13, 2008–Monday, February 16, 2009
- The result of a Walters artist-in-residence program, this focus exhibition features portraits by celebrated American photographer Dawoud Bey, juxtaposed with selected works from the Walters collection.
- Mummified
- Saturday, November 15, 2008–Monday, November 08, 2010
- Discover the ancient secrets of the Walters' mummy, as revealed through the techniques of virtual autopsy. This focus show will feature approximately 20 ancient Egyptian objects depicting images of mummified people, animals, and deities. A section of the installation will focus on the "Mummimania" of the 17th-20th centuries.
- Salviati and the Antique
- Monday, October 20, 2008–Sunday, November 02, 2008
- Drawing on several examples from the ancient world, this Focus Exhibition explores the work of 19th-century glass artists and their antique inspirations.
- Bedazzled: 5,000 Years of Jewelry
- Sunday, October 19, 2008–Sunday, January 04, 2009
- Spanning 50 centuries, and including examples from throughout the collection, this exhibition features more than 200 selections from the Walters spectacular jewelry holdings.
- Autumn Colors
- Saturday, September 27, 2008–Sunday, November 30, 2008
- Celebrate the beauty of autumn with selections from the Feinberg collection of Japanese paintings from the Edo period.
- The Special Dead: A Medieval Reliquary Revealed
- Saturday, August 02, 2008–Sunday, January 18, 2009
- Discover the secrets of one of the Walters Art Museum's most important works of medieval art. Using both art historical and technical research, this experimental installation?which is part of a larger exhibition project planned at the Walters for the spring of 2011?will focus on the 13th-century reliquary shrine of St. Amandus.
- Faces of Ancient Arabia
- Sunday, July 20, 2008–Sunday, September 07, 2008
- Celebrating a recent gift to the Walters, this exhibition brings to life the art and history of the kingdoms of South Arabia--the legendary land of the Queen of Sheba.
- Sonya Clark: Loose Strands, Tight Knots
- Saturday, June 28, 2008–Sunday, September 21, 2008
- Featuring approximately 20 works by contemporary artist Sonya Clark, this focus exhibition explores the concepts of personal adornment, the creative process, and shifting cultural notions of beauty.
- Maps: Finding Our Place in the World
- Sunday, March 16, 2008–Sunday, June 08, 2008
- The most ambitious American exhibition devoted to maps in more than 50 years, this special exhibition features some of the world's greatest cartographic treasures.
- Maps on Purpose
- Saturday, March 01, 2008–Sunday, June 08, 2008
- Working with Baltimore community organizations, schools, and artists, Art on Purpose participants will use a selection of maps from the Walters to inspire mapping projects in Baltimore city neighborhoods.
- Mapping the Cosmos
- Saturday, February 02, 2008–Sunday, July 27, 2008
- Scheduled to coincide with the exhibition Maps: Finding Our Place in the World, this focus show will present images from space taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
- Déjà Vu? Revealing Repetition in French Masterpieces
- Sunday, October 07, 2007–Tuesday, January 01, 2008
- Featuring works by many of the greatest artists of the 18th-20th centuries, this exhibition explores the changing significance of repetition and copying within the French painting tradition.
- Recurrence
- Wednesday, September 19, 2007–Sunday, January 20, 2008
- Selections from the Walters permanent collection of Egyptian, ancient Greek, and Asian art come together for a special look at the repetition of imagery across cultural boundaries.
- The Repeating Image in Renaissance and Baroque Art
- Saturday, September 08, 2007–Sunday, February 17, 2008
- This focus show, featuring works of art in various media, presents a survey of the various methods of artistic copying popular in the 16th and 17th centuries.
- Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt
- Friday, June 15, 2007–Sunday, August 26, 2007
- This exhibition celebrates the distinctive and beautiful quilts made by African American women living in the isolated community of Gee's Bend, Alabama.
- Linda Day Clark: The Gee's Bend Photographs
- Friday, June 15, 2007–Sunday, September 02, 2007
- In conjunction with the special exhibition, Gees Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt, the Walters will feature Linda Day Clark: The Gees Bend Photographs, a stunning exhibition of 25 photographs by Baltimore resident, Linda Day Clark.
- Ottoman Embroideries and Other Ornament
- Saturday, May 05, 2007–Sunday, September 09, 2007
- The Ottoman Empire was home to a variety of ethnic and religious communities. Despite their cultural differences, these communities shared a sophisticated language of ornament, that each cultural group modified and adapted to its own individual needs and values.
- Floral Still Lifes from the Collection of Robert and Jane Meyerhoff
- Thursday, March 29, 2007–Sunday, June 10, 2007
- The selection of around twenty-three watercolors, pastels, and drawings includes works by Delacroix, Cezanne, Redon, Klee, Schiele, Mondrian, Matisse, Magritte, Nolde and Dali among others.
- Untamed: The Art of Antoine-Louis Barye
- Sunday, February 11, 2007–Sunday, May 06, 2007
- Organized by the Walters, this exhibition is devoted to the works of Antoine-Louis Barye (1796-1875), the foremost animal sculptor of the 19th century. The exhibition will include not only his well-known sculptures, but also his oil and watercolor paintings and sketches.
- Speaking the Word of God: Illuminated Korans from the Walters Art Museum
- Saturday, February 03, 2007–Sunday, April 29, 2007
- Showcasing a stunning array of 22 manuscripts from the collection of the Walters Art Museum, this exhibition will present Korans from different regions of the Muslim world, following the development of calligraphy from the ninth to the 19th century.
- Daily Magic in Ancient Egypt
- Saturday, December 02, 2006–Sunday, November 25, 2007
- Magic played an important role in religions of the ancient world. Amulets in particular were believed to posess great power to bring protection, health, luck, and even immortality through their images and symbols.
- "For This Is My Body": The Medieval Missal
- Saturday, November 04, 2006–Sunday, January 28, 2007
- This exhibition of manuscripts, printed books, and altar furnishings coincides with the celebrations marking the reopening of Baltimore's historic Basilica of the Assumption.
- Courbet and the Modern Landscape
- Sunday, October 15, 2006–Sunday, January 07, 2007
- Featuring 37 landscape paintings, this exhibition demonstrates how Courbet was a radical innovator both in the motifs he chose to paint and in the dramatic brushwork of his paintings.
- Courbet/Not Courbet
- Saturday, September 16, 2006–Sunday, March 11, 2007
- As a companion to the special exhibition Courbet and the Modern Landscape, this small installation includes landscape paintings whose attribution to Gustave Courbet continues to be debated by specialists.
- Schatzkammer: Henry Walters' German Manuscripts
- Saturday, July 22, 2006–Sunday, October 29, 2006
- This exhibition introduces visitors to 25 German manuscripts dating from the 9th through the 16th century, many of which have rarely been on display.
- Alfred Jacob Miller and the Western Indians
- Saturday, June 24, 2006–Sunday, September 10, 2006
- This small exhibition featured 20 paintings by famed Baltimore artist Alfred Jacob Miller. In 1837, Baltimore painter Alfred Jacob Miller (1810-74) was hired by Captain William Drummond Stewart, an eccentric Scottish adventurer, to journey to the animal fur-traders' rendezvous in the Green River Valley (in what is now western Wyoming) and to document the trip in paintings.
- Mightier Than the Sword: The Satirical Pen of KAL
- Sunday, June 18, 2006–Sunday, September 03, 2006
- This exhibition celebrated KAL's 17 years as editorial cartoonist at The Baltimore Sun and his 26 years at The Economist. KAL's renowned cartoons and caricatures, as well as his lesser-known works of sculpture, film, and 3-D animation, were on view. The exhibition featured cartoons illustrating local, national, and international political satire, and covered a broad range of social issues.
- Portrait Miniatures of the Napoleonic Era
- Friday, June 16, 2006–Sunday, June 25, 2006
- These eight miniatures executed during the time of Napoleon Bonaparte's reign in the early 19th century included portraits of Empresses Josephine and Marie-Louise.
- Louise Bourgeois: Femme
- Saturday, February 11, 2006–Sunday, May 21, 2006
- In a joint venture of the Walters and the Contemporary Museum, Louise Bourgeois--an important and influential living artist--installed 39 sculptures throughout the Walters' galleries, setting her works in dialogue with like-themed cultural artifacts from the museum's collection.
- The Art of Law
- Saturday, January 14, 2006–Sunday, April 09, 2006
- This exhibition showcased manuscripts and rare books pertaining to the study, practice, and administration of the law from the 12th to 15th century.
- The Ashcan School
- Saturday, January 07, 2006–Sunday, March 19, 2006
- This small exhibition featured 29 drawings, watercolors, and etchings borrowed from the collection of Mrs. Sigmund Hyman were featured in this focus exhibition.
- Sacred Arts and City Life
- Saturday, November 19, 2005–Sunday, February 12, 2006
- The exhibition featured approximately 290 objects--including 35 icons--that traced the material and artistic culture of Novgorod from the 9th century, through its golden age in the 14th century, to its eclipse by Moscow in the 16th century.
- Dressed in Gold
- Saturday, October 15, 2005–Sunday, January 08, 2006
- In conjunction with the reopening of the Walters' magnificent Italian paintings collections, this exhibition showcased the museums impressive collection of Italian Renaissance manuscripts.
- Things with Wings
- Wednesday, October 12, 2005–Sunday, November 26, 2006
- This small exhibition of 31 objects, including bronze and marble statuettes, vases, and gems, explores the various winged gods and hybrid creatures in ancient Greek art.
- The Walters American Collection
- Wednesday, June 29, 2005–Sunday, January 01, 2006
- While strong in many types of art, the Walters has only a relatively small number of American works. William Walters first collected American art, but, while living abroad, he became interested in European art and sold most of his American holdings.
- Pearls of the Parrot
- Sunday, June 19, 2005–Sunday, September 11, 2005
- This exhibition featured one of the most sumptuous manuscripts ever produced at the Mughal court of India: an illustrated edition of the Khamsa (Quintet of Tales) by Amir Khusraw.
- The Essence of Line
- Sunday, June 19, 2005–Sunday, September 11, 2005
- This exhibition displayed 75 French works on paper from the Walters; at the same time, a similar number were on display at The Baltimore Museum of Art.
- The Closed Book
- Saturday, May 07, 2005–Sunday, September 18, 2005
- This exhibition explored how certain markings on, or materials of, book bindings reveal fascinating details about the people who owned and used them.
- Stubbs and the Horse
- Sunday, March 13, 2005–Sunday, May 29, 2005
- This major exhibition featured over 40 paintings and 35 drawings by George Stubbs, known for his large-scale paintings of horses. On view was his famous painting Whistlejacket, considered the finest depiction of an individual animal ever painted.
- Popular Prints from the French Revolution
- Saturday, February 12, 2005–Sunday, June 19, 2005
- This two-part exhibition examined popular prints from the French Revolutionary period (approximately 1789-93), highlighting how such prints were used, sold, and displayed and exploring the sources for their imagery in popular culture.
- The Early History of the Bible
- Saturday, January 22, 2005–Sunday, May 01, 2005
- This exhibition showcased a recently donated Torah scroll and examined Old and New Testament scripture in different religious traditions. At the center of this exhibition was the museum's most recent manuscript acquisition, a 17th-century Hebrew Torah scroll.
- Carved for Immortality
- Saturday, November 06, 2004–Sunday, October 02, 2005
- This small exhibition highlighted ancient Egyptian statues carved from wood. In ancient Egypt, carved wooden figures of the deceased were placed in special chambers or niches in tombs.
- The Road to Impressionism
- Sunday, October 03, 2004–Monday, January 17, 2005
- The innovations made by the painters associated with the Barbizon school led to the development of Impressionism. This exhibition explored the wide range of work of the Barbizon artists (including Théodore Rousseau, Jean-François Millet, Camille Corot, and Charles-François Daubigny), from forest scenes to stormy seascapes, from scenes of bright sunlight to atmospheric moonlight, and from moving pictures of peasant hardship to humorous depictions of leisurely boat trips.
