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Baltimore Museum of Art unveils massive installation by Mickalene Thomas
Out queer/lesbian artist finds inspiration in ‘60s, ‘70s liberation, aesthetics
Since he became director of the Baltimore Museum of Art three years ago, Christopher Bedford has made it clear he wants to expose visitors to diverse voices and perspectives.
One sign of his effort is an 18-month exhibit that opened this fall featuring Mickalene Thomas, a 48-year-old black queer/lesbian artist from Camden, N.J.
In “Mickalene Thomas: A Moment’s Pleasure,” the artist has taken over a part of the museum that isn’t typically used for exhibits, the two-story East Lobby, and made it the backdrop for her work. She also brought in more than two dozen other artists to be part of her installation.
“Mickalene’s ambitious reinstallation of the East Lobby offers a new and exciting aesthetic experience — one that engages the senses at every turn and offers the community a dynamic new space in which to connect with each other, the work and the museum,” Bedford says. “It is transformative in its own right as an astounding work of art and in its revisioning of what the museum can and should feel like to visitors.”
Whereas museum architect John Russell Pope wanted the museum to be Baltimore’s porch when he designed the original building in the 1920s, Bedford says, “I think what Mickalene Thomas has conceived is Baltimore’s living room.”
Thomas, who is often included in lists and articles focusing on the country’s leading queer artists, creates visually and conceptually layered compositions using a wide range of media. Best known for her elaborate paintings composed of acrylic, enamel and rhinestones, she also makes collages, photographs, videos and room-sized installations.
Her genre-busting work includes portraits, landscapes and interiors that blend art history and pop culture to explore themes of gender, identity, sexuality, race, beauty, equity, power, “sense of self” and the human body. She looks at femininity and womanhood against the backdrop of the civil rights movement in the U. S. and the societal upheaval of the 1970s and 1980s.
The Baltimore exhibit is one of three she has on display right now, along with others at the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans and the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as Washington’s Smithsonian American Art Museum and many others.
A graduate of the Pratt Institute and the Yale University School of Art, now based in New York, Thomas has also become a celebrity and a mentor for young artists. She’s one of the founders of the Josie Club, a group of “black queer women.” She has been chosen to design the custom outer “wrap” for a Rolls Royce Red Phantom that Sotheby’s is auctioning to help the global charity known as (RED) raise funds to eradicate AIDS. The Los Angeles Times said she is to contemporary painting what Daft Punk is to music, “one of the more original remix artists working today.” Smithsonian Magazine called her a “Renaissance rock star.”
At the Art Basel Miami festival this month, Thomas and her partner and collaborator Racquel Chevremont were spotted all over town, from the opening of Thomas’s show at the Bass Museum to the debut of the new Rubell Museum in Allapattah, another high-profile collection that includes her work.
At the Baltimore Museum of Art, Thomas has turned the East Lobby into a community gathering spot that doubles as a showcase for her work and those of others in the exhibit. It’s one of the largest commissions she’s ever undertaken and the first major presentation of the museum’s 2020 Vision initiative, which highlights female-identifying artists
The transformation starts on the exterior, where she has installed a vinyl mural that looks like three oversized Baltimore row house facades, one in brick, one with siding and one in FormStone.
The residential theme continues inside the entrance. Every surface of the lobby has been covered with materials that evoke a domestic setting, including wallpaper, carpet, linoleum flooring, faux wood paneling and a wall of house plants.
On the second-level mezzanine, Thomas created a tableau of a living room and then juxtaposed it with a large mural of a sofa and hanging lamp. Her vivid colors, geometric patterns and textures bring to mind the aesthetics of the 1970s and 1980s, a period she sees as particularly significant for African Americans.
On the Murray J. Rymland Terrace, an area not usually accessible to the public, Thomas created a temporary “Terrace Gallery” that consists of two rooms, one fitted out like a den with a large TV and one that resembles a club basement.
These spaces are filled with works by 16 other artists. Halfway through the show, the works now on display will be replaced with works by 16 more artists. A back door in the club basement leads to a small outdoor space, complete with Astroturf, that’s reminiscent of the sort of postage stamp-sized back yards many Baltimore row houses have.
The East Lobby of the museum’s 1982 wing has typically served as a circulation space leading to the visitor information counter, the gift shop, Gertrude’s Chesapeake Kitchen restaurant and galleries elsewhere in the building.
Thomas says she gave the lobby a more residential feel as a way of encouraging artists and visitors to make it their own space, and do what they want with it.
She said other artists might have created a single sculpture or painting in the lobby, but she wanted to do something that was “more transformative” and inviting to the community at large.
“How does one do that in this space?” she says. “It’s about really changing the façade. It’s about changing the interior. But also allowing this lobby to be open in a way, where all of my touches are along the side, on the periphery. So what you do, you open up the space architecturally and you allow this now to be performative, occupied space for the organization and community that decides to come in here to take over.
“The organization and artists that we’re working with, this gives them opportunity to use this as their platform, to use this space, this lobby, as their space,” she says. “To take ownership of that, whether it be a dance performance that could be here, whether it could be musicians … or a place of conversation. This becomes their landscape, their museum, that they can transform and use as their living room.”
Thomas says the Baltimore exhibit reflects a “black aesthetic” that’s evident in all of her work.
“Black aesthetic is black art,” she said. “Black living. Black love. Black materials. Black poetry. Black literature. Black music.”She used colors and materials that evoke the 1970s, she said, because she believes that was a key period for blacks and women, in terms of civil rights and artistic expression.
“Historically, when you think of black women owning their beauty, their hairstyles, when you think of styles and music, everything happened in the late ’60s, ’70s,” she says.
She takes a holistic approach to presenting art. At the public opening of the exhibit, she designed her own signature cocktail for the event and offered custom nail art in a pop-up nail shop. Her installation also includes costumes for museum staffers working in the lobby, created by Dominican-born fashion designer Jose Duran.
The other artists she enlisted range from some who are nationally prominent and have been widely displayed, to others who have never had work shown in a major museum before. All have ties to Baltimore and their work includes paintings, prints and drawings as well as videos. The Terrace Gallery will also be a setting for a series of events, including film screenings, artist talks, performances and workshops.
Featured artists include Derrick Adams, Zoe Charlton, Theresa Chromati, Dominiqua Eldridge, Devin Morris, Clifford Owens and D’Metrius John Rice. Videos are by Abdu Ali and Karryl Eugene; Erick Antonio Benitez, Nicoletta Darita de la Brown, Kotic Couture, Markele Cullins, Emily Eaglin, Hunter Hooligan and TT the Artist.
“A Moment’s Pleasure” is the first presentation in a new initiative called the Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker Biennial Commission, which will bring a new exhibit to the museum’s east lobby every two years.
Meyerhoff and Becker established the commission in 2018 to give contemporary artists a platform within the museum to carry out ambitious projects that engage the community, in one of the most accessible parts of the building. According to Bedford, the goal is “making the museum experience more welcoming to a broader range of visitors through exceptional art.”
Bedford curated the Thomas exhibit with Meyerhoff-Becker curatorial fellow Cynthia Hodge-Thorne and curatorial assistants Katie Cooke and Carlyn Thomas. He praises Thomas for including others.
“Many other artists would have taken a commission like this and it would have been all about them, all the time. In the case of Mickalene Thomas, it is not all about her, all the time. In fact, there is an ego-less dimension to this installation that I think is timely, laudable and quite uniquely her.”
“Mickalene Thomas: A Moment’s Pleasure” is a free exhibit that will run through May 2, 2021. Located at 10 Art Museum Drive in north Baltimore, the museum is open Wednesday through Sunday from 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
a&e features
Memorial for groundbreaking bisexual activist set for May 2
Loraine Hutchins remembered as a ‘force of nature’
The Montgomery County Pride Center will host a celebration honoring the life and legacy of Loraine Hutchins, Ph.D., on May 2. People are invited to attend the onsite memorial or a livestream event. The on-site event will begin at 10 a.m. with a meet-and-greet mixer before moving into a memorial service around the theme “Loraine a Force of Nature!” at 11 a.m., a panel talk at 12 p.m., break out sessions for artists, academics, and activists to build on her legacy at 1 p.m. and a closing reception at 2 p.m.
Attendees are encouraged to register for the on-site memorial gathering or the livestreamed memorial. The goal of this event is also to collect stories and memories of Loraine. Attendees and others can share their stories at padlet.com.
An obituary for Hutchins was published in the Bladelast Nov. 24, where people can learn more about her activism in the bisexual community. A private service for friends and family was held in December but this memorial service is open to all.
Alongside her groundbreaking work organizing for U.S. bisexual rights and liberation including co-editing “Bi Any Other Name: BIsexual People Speak Out” (1991), she also integrated faith into her sexual education and advocacy work. Her 2001 doctoral dissertation, “Erotic Rites: A Cultural Analysis of Contemporary U.S. Sacred Sexuality Traditions and Trends,” offered a pointed queer and feminist analysis to sex-neutral and sex-positive spiritual traditions in the United States. Her thesis was also groundbreaking in exploring the intersections between sex workers and those in caregiving professionals, including spiritual ones.
In an oral history interview conducted by Michelle Mueller back in August 2023, Hutchins described herself as a “priestess without a congregation.” While she has occasionally had a sense of community and feels part of a group of loving people, she admitted that “I don’t feel like we have the shape or the purpose that we need.”
“I’ve often experienced being the Cassandra in the room, the Cassandra in the community. Somebody who’s kind of way out there ahead, thinking through the strategic action points that my community hasn’t gotten to yet, and getting a lot of resistance and hostile responses from people who are frightened by dissent and conflict and not ready for the changes we have to make to survive,” she said.
“For somebody who’s bisexual in an out political way and who’s been a spokesperson for the polyamory movement in an out political way, it’s very exposing. And it’s very important to me to be able to try to explain and help other people understand the connection between spirituality and sexuality,” she explained citing how even as a graduate student she was “exploring how to feel erotic and spiritual, and not feel them in conflict with each other in my own spiritual contemplative life and my own sensual body awareness of being alive in the world.”
“Every religion has a sense of sacred sexuality. It’s just they put a lot of boundaries and regulations on it, and if we have a spiritual practice that is totally affirming of women’s priesthood and of gay people, queer people’s ability to minister to everyone and to be ministered to be everyone, what does that do to the gender of God, or our understanding of how we practice our spirituality and our sexuality in community and privately?”
“There’s no easy answer,” she concludes, and she continued to grapple with these questions throughout her life, co-editing another seminal text, “Sexuality, Religion and the Sacred: Bisexual, Pansexual, and Polysexual Perspectives,” published in 2012. Her work blending spiritual and queer liberation remains groundbreaking to this day.
Rev. Eric Eldritch, a local community organizer and ordained Pagan minister with Circle Sanctuary who has worked for decades with the DC Center’s Center Faith to organize the Pride Interfaith Service, is eager to highlight this element of her legacy at the memorial service next month.
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Queery: Meet artist, performer John Levengood
Modern creative talks nightlife, coming out, and his personal queer heroes
John Levengood (he/him) describes himself as a modern creative with a wide‑ranging toolkit. He blends music, technology, civic duty, and a sharp sense of wit into a cohesive artistic identity. Known primarily as a recording artist and performer, he’s also a self‑taught music producer and software engineer who embodies a generation of creators who build their own lanes rather than wait for one to appear.
Levengood, 32, who is single and identifies as gay and queer, is best known as a recording artist who has performed at Pride festivals across the country, including the main stages of World Pride DC, Central Arkansas Pride, and Charlotte Pride.
“Locally in the DMV, I’m known for turning heads at nightlife venues with my eye-catching sense of style. When I go out, I don’t try to blend in. I hope I inspire people to be themselves and have the courage to stand out,” he says.
He’s also known for hosting karaoke at Freddie’s Beach Bar in Arlington, Va., on Thursday nights. “I like to create a space where people feel comfortable expressing themselves, building community, and showcasing their talents.”
He also creates social media content from my performances and do interviews at LGBTQ+ bars and theatres in the DMV. Follow the Arlington resident @johnlevengood.
How long have you been out and who was the hardest person to tell?
I have been fully out of the closet since 2019. My parents were the hardest people to tell because my family has always been my rock and at the time I couldn’t imagine a world without them. Their reactions were extremely positive and supportive so I had nothing to fear all along.
I remember sitting on the couch with my mom, dad, and sister in our hotel room in New Orleans during our winter vacation and being so nervous to tell them. After I finally mustered up the nerve and made the proclamation, I realized my dad had already fallen asleep on the couch. My mom promised to tell him when he woke up.
Who’s your LGBTQ hero?
My LGBTQ heroes are Harvey Milk for paving the way for gays in politics and Elton John for being a pioneer for the fabulous and authentic. My local heroes in the DMV are Howard Hicks, manager of Green Lantern, and Tony Rivenbark, manager of Freddie’s Beach Bar. Both of them are essential to creating spaces where I’ve felt welcome and safe since moving to the DMV.
What’s Washington’s best nightspot, past or present?
Trade tops the list for me because of the dance floor and outdoor space. It’s so nice to get a break from the music every once and a while to be able to have a conversation.
We live in challenging times. How do you cope?
I’m still figuring this out. What is working right now is writing music and spending time with family and friends. I’ve also been spending less time on social media going to the gym at least three times a week.
What streaming show are you binging?
After “Traitors” Season 4 ended, I was in a bit of a show hole, but “Stumble” has me in a laughing loop right now. The writing is so witty.
What do you wish you’d known at 18?
At 18, I wish I would have known how liberating it is to come out of the closet. It would have been nice to know some winning lottery numbers as well.
What are your friends messaging about in your most recent group chat?
We are planning our next trip to New York City. If you can believe it, I visited NYC for the first time in 2025 for Pride and I’ve been back every quarter since. Growing up in the country, I was subconsciously primed to be scared of the city. But my mind has been blown. I can’t wait to go back.
Why Washington?
It’s the closest metropolitan area to my family, but not too close. I love the museums, the diversity, the history, and the proximity to the beach and mountains. It’s also nice to live in a city with public transportation.
Aging RFK Stadium has come down, but the RFK grounds are still getting lit up. Welcome back to the stage Project GLOW, D.C.’s homegrown electronic festival, on May 30-31. Back for its fifth year on these musically inclined acres, Project GLOW returns with an even more diverse lineup, and one that continues to celebrate LGBTQ antecedents, attendees, and acts.
Project GLOW 2026 headliners include house and techno star Mau P, progressive house legend Eric Prydz, hard-techno favorite Sara Landry, and bass acts Excision b2b Sullivan King, among the lineup of trance, bass, house, techno, dubstep, and others for the fifth anniversary year.
President & CEO Pete Kalamoutsos — born and raised in D.C. — founded Club GLOW in 1999. In 2020, GLOW entered into a partnership with global entertainment company Insomniac Events to produce live events like Project GLOW, which kicked off in 2022.
As in past years, Project GLOW not only makes space, but is intentionally inclusive of the LGBTQ community, one of its most dedicated fan bases. The festival’s LGBTQ-focused Secret Garden stage blooms again — a more intimate dance area that stands on the strength of DJs and musicians who draw from the LGBTQ community. D.C.’s LGBTQ nightlife mastermind Ed Bailey is the creative mind behind Secret Garden again. He joined Project GLOW in 2023.
“Kalamoustos says that “he’s proud of his partnership with Ed Bailey, along with Capital Pride and [nightlife producer] Jake Resnikow. It’s amazing to collaborate with Bailey at the Secret Garden stage, especially after the curated lineup we worked on at Pride last year.”
The Secret Garden will be a bit different from other stages: Eternal (“At the Eternal stage, time stands still. Lose yourself in the dance of past, present, and future, surrendering to the eternal rhythm of the universe”) and Pulse (“Feel the rhythm of the beat pulse through your veins as the heartbeat of the crowd synchronizes into one. Here, every moment vibrates with life as it guides you through a new dimension of euphoria”). The Secret Garden stage is in the round, surrounded by 16 shipping containers. The containers play canvas to muralists from around the world, who are coming in to paint them in a vibrant garden-style vibe. “We gave this stage some extra love with this layout,” K says, “ we finally cracked the code.”
K says that this will be the biggest lineup yet for the Secret Garden, featuring Nicole Moudaber b2b Chasewest, Riordan b2b Bullet Tooth, Ranger Trucco, Cassian, Eli & Fur, Cosmic Gate and Hayla. The stage is also the largest yet, featuring an expanded dance floor and 360-degree viewing.
Across all stages, K says that his goal for the fifth anniversary is “More art and fan interactive experience, more like a festival, strive to be like a Tomorrowland, as budget grows to add more experience.” Last year’s Project GLOW alone drew 40,000 attendees over two days.
K, however, was not satisfied with one festival this spring. GLOW recently announced a “pop-up” one-day event. Teaming up with Black Book Records, GLOW is set to throw a first-of-its-kind dance-music takeover of Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., headlined by electronic music star Chris Lake. Set for April 18, this euphoric block party will feature bass and vibes blocks from the White House. Organizers expect as many as 10,000 fans to attend. Beyond music, there will be food, activations, and plenty of other activities taking place around 6th St and Pennsylvania Ave NW – a location familiar to many in the LGBTQ community, as this sits squarely inside the blocks of the Capital Pride party that takes place in DC every June.
Over the past two decades, Club GLOW has produced thousands of events, from club nights to large-scale festivals including Project GLOW, Moonrise Festival, and more. Club GLOW also operates Echostage.
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