Baltimore's Community Museum
This Sunday join the Peale at the Jonestown Festival, an outdoor extravaganza featuring circus acts, an escape artist, stilt walkers, face painters, and more in Baltimore’s oldest neighborhood.
Sunday, June 24th, 12 pm to 4pm
Lloyd St between Lombard and Baltimore, B’nai Israel Synagogue
Visit the Peale’s table on Lloyd Street for butterfly puppet-making and storytelling activities inspired by our new pollinator garden!
You don’t need a radio show or podcast to have meaningful conversations. Get to know strangers, neighbors, and even friends and family better with your very own deck of questions asked by Aaron Henkin for Out of the Blocks on WYPR. This standard deck of playing cards is an interview toolkit, tried and tested in hundreds of interviews across Baltimore and beyond. Available online here or at the Peale Center for US$10.00 each + shipping!
James D. Dilts, a former Baltimore Sun reporter and author who wrote widely on railroads, architecture, historic preservation and jazz and led the effort for the restoration of the historic Peale Museum in Baltimore, died at Union Memorial Hospital on Tuesday from heart failure and multiple myeloma.
The Evergreen resident was 81.
“Jim was an iconic figure to anyone even remotely interested in the B&O and its embryonic fits and starts. His masterwork,‘The Great Road,’ is a must read. His early history of the railroad is unparalleled,” said Courtney B. Wilson, executive director of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum and a longtime friend.
“His written works, love for Baltimore and its buildings, his kind words and contagious laugh will keep him alive and in the hearts of many,” Mr. Wilson said.
Herbert H. Harwood Jr., a noted railroad author and historian and a retired CSX executive, called Mr. Dilts a “first-class historian.”
“Jim’s book on the B&O is a virtuoso job,” said Mr. Harwood, a Cross Keys resident. “You can’t pick at it one way or the other.”
James Dothard Dilts, who died yesterday at age 81 after a short illness, had many talents. A journalist, historian, book author, carpenter and sailor, he was also a jazz connoisseur, documentary filmmaker, friend of artists and a leader of Baltimore’s preservation movement.
His presence will be missed in those diverse spheres even as his legacy will grow thanks to what he’s left behind – not just a written record of hundreds of articles and a half dozen books, but an elegance of manner capped by an infectious grin that drew many into his orbit.
Insofar as describing himself, Jim liked to recall the day he emerged from a dusty railroad tunnel in West Virginia (part of his hands-on research of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad) only to be confronted by a bewildered local.
“You some kind of enTHUsiast?” the man asked the hot and begrimed city slicker.
Jim cherished that description and, as time went by, his enthusiasm for his adopted hometown only multiplied as he battled to preserve Fells Point from foolish development, covered the local jazz scene for DownBeat and unearthed such buried treasures as Baby Lawrence, the legendary tap dancer who had fallen on hard times.
Interested in helping reinvent the 21st century museum? The Peale Center for Baltimore History and Architecture is looking for reliable and creative volunteers who want to spread their wings and help us soar! We’re renovating the oldest museum building in the U.S. and relaunching it as a platform for cultural innovation: a center for producing inclusive narratives of the City that help people see Baltimore in a new light.
Whether your thing is art or architecture, storytelling or natural science, history or new technologies, there is an opportunity for you to develop your ideas and skills at the Peale. Even an occasional contribution can make a big difference to the Peale and the services we are able to provide to the City’s communities. Everyone’s input is welcome and valued – contact us if you can help with your time and expertise. Thank you!
The Peale Center is developing several opportunities for artists and artisans to sell their work directly to the visiting public, including a Museum Shop, Maker Markets, and other Special Events to kick off in May 2018.
If you are a Baltimore area maker, artist or artisan who would be interested in selling your work at The Peale Center, please answer this informational questionnaire by April 30th to let us know a bit more about you and your work!
You can check out other opportunities at the Peale here.
The Peale Center and its director, Nancy Proctor, were featured in today’s Motivation on Monday by Juststuntproductions.
You can also see Nancy interviewed and every Motivation on Monday on The Artist Exchange Radio Show Mondays 2-4pm www.BeExposedRadio.com
Kathleen Maher’s talk at the Peale was livestreamed on Sunday, April 8. You can see the live version on Facebook and an edited version including Maher’s slides will be coming soon.
Mayor Catherine Pugh made the historic decision to have four Confederate statues removed from Baltimore’s public spaces last night. Many, such as Baltimore Heritage, have convened tours and discussions about the statues, and Noise Plaque contributed their response to the Parting of Lee and Jackson statue in Wyman Park to the #BhereBmore project last year. We’d like to hear your stories: how have you experienced the statues and their removal? Please tag your thoughts on social media with the hashtag #BhereBmore.
Here is a handy timeline of Confederate monuments and memory in Baltimore compiled by Eli Pousson.
If you tag your posts, recordings and photos #BhereBmore, we’ll make a Storify of what you share. Here are some of the tools and platforms we use regularly: https://www.museweb.us/platforms-for-storytellers/
Please note that hate speech and racist comments will not be collected.
Today Peale Director Nancy Proctor talked about the Peale’s past, present and future on WYPR’s Humanities Connection. Hear the broadcast or read the full transcript below.
Phoebe Stein, Executive Director of Maryland Humanities: Did you know that the Peale is the oldest museum building in the United States? Nancy Proctor, director of the Peale Center for Baltimore History and Architecture, tells us a bit about the Peale’s past, present, and future in Baltimore.
Nancy Proctor: Baltimore is one of the oldest cities in the United States. But its reputation has been shaped by a small number of narratives that don’t adequately represent the full diversity of Baltimore’s voices. Baltimore needs new narratives in order to be understood and valued, globally and at home. And as the African proverb goes, “Every time an elder dies, a library burns to the ground.” We also need to save the old stories before they disappear forever.
The Peale Center for Baltimore History and Architecture aims to help people see Baltimore in a new light by serving as a production house for narratives of the City, new and old. The new Center is based in the historic Peale Museum, a place with a fascinating story of its own. Rembrandt Peale first opened the doors of his Museum and Gallery of the Fine Arts on August 15, 1814. Coming from a family of accomplished artists, explorers, and natural scientists, Peale demonstrated gas light in his Museum’s galleries, and then introduced the first street lamps powered by gas across the city. “Light City” was the first town in America to use the new technology, and The Gas Light Company Peale founded in 1816 has now been in continuous operation for more than 200 years. It’s known today as BGE.
Peale’s Museum, on the other hand, didn’t last so long. By 1830 it had closed, and the building was purchased by the City to be used as its first City Hall. At the end of the 19th century, it became the first public high school for African-American students in Baltimore. From the 1930s through 1996, the building served as the City’s Municipal Museum once more, commonly known as “the Peale.” For the past 20 years, the building has been largely vacant, but has hosted a number of critically-acclaimed events, including The Contemporary’s 2016 exhibition “Only when it’s dark enough can you see the stars,” by Abigail DeVille, and Submersive Theater’s ground-breaking production, “H.T. Darling’s Incredible Musaeum Presents: The Treasures of New Galapagos, Astonishing Aquisitions from the Perisphere.” That sold-out show, inspired in part by the Peale’s own history, will return to the Peale in November for a limited run.
The new Peale Center will continue to host dynamic exhibitions and programs throughout the 2017 renovation of the building’s exterior, including, in October, Birdland in the Anthropocene, curated by Baker Prize-winning artist, Lynne Parks. We’re also reaching out to local groups and artists to co-produce programs in Baltimore’s communities. The Peale’s core initiative is Be Here: Baltimore, featuring authentic stories of the city as told by the people who live and work here. Be Here: Baltimore was piloted last summer, and has helped publish more than 1,200 Baltimore stories on a range of free and open platforms in the past year.
When the Peale’s renovation is complete in 2020, the historic building will host a Media Maker Space, giving the city’s culture keepers the resources and expertise they need to publish anything from mobile apps and VR experiences, to exhibitions and documentary films. By supporting the city’s creators, the Peale aims to catalyze a new American Renaissance that will yield a more inclusive record of the city, its people, and its places.
To find out more about what’s happening at the Peale, you can come by for tours, and live storytelling with WYPR’s Aaron Henkin during our Founder’s Day Open House, August 14-15, at 225 Holliday Street, across from the Abel Wolman Municipal Building.
Phoebe Stein: More information about upcoming events at the Peale can be found at old.thepealecenter.org. Maryland Humanities is a statewide nonprofit that creates and supports educational experiences in the humanities that inspire all Marylanders to embrace lifelong learning, exchange ideas openly, and enrich their communities. Humanities Connection is produced by Maryland Humanities for WYPR. For Maryland Humanities, I’m Phoebe Stein.