a&e features
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
New book celebrates 1970s dance music icons
‘A Night at the Disco’ features interviews with Donna Summer, Debbie Harry, more
If you’re a fan of 1970s-era dance music, don’t miss the irresistible new book by Christian John Wikane and Alice Harris, “A Night at the Disco,” which revisits more than 90 interviews conducted with some of the biggest names in pop culture.
“A Night at the Disco” (ACC Art Books) was published on March 24, and distributed by Simon & Schuster. It celebrates more than 100 artists who sparked a phenomenon in dance music from 1970-1979 and features excerpts from interviews with everyone from Donna Summer to Debbie Harry.
Lost City Books (2467 18th St., N.W.) will welcome author Christian John Wikane for a book signing and conversation about “A Night at the Disco” on Thursday, April 16 at 6 p.m. Details at lostcitybookstore.com. Bird in Hand Coffee & Books in Baltimore (11 E. 33rd St.) )will also host a Q&A with the author on Wednesday, April 15 at 6 p.m. Details at theivybookshop.com.
Below is an excerpt from “A Night at the Disco.”
“I’ll let in anyone who looks like they’ll make things fun.” Steve Rubell is guiding a New York Times reporter through Studio 54 as resident DJ Richie Kaczor dazzles the crowd with records by CHIC, Odyssey, and T-Connection. “Disco, that’s where the happy people go,” The Trammps sing as dancers spin and twirl underneath tubes of flashing lights. Seven months since Rubell and co-owner Ian Schrager opened Studio 54 in April 1977, it’s welcomed untold numbers of “happy people” … at least those lucky enough to pass through the doors.
“We were part of the chosen few,” says André De Shields, who immortalized the title role in The Wiz on Broadway at the time. “We could show up at Studio 54 and the doorman at the velvet stanchion would look over everyone and point to us from The Wiz to come in, that kind of thing.” As the lead vocalist in the GRAMMY-nominated Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, whose debut modernized big band sophistication for the discothèques, Cory Daye had carte blanche in the club. “The energy was like a New Year’s Eve party every night,” she says. “I would go up to the mezzanine and watch the mechanical light pillars go up and down, metallic confetti falling from the ceiling, the spoon and the moon. I was so fascinated and enamored by it.
“When a certain song came on, the people would just rush to the dance floor. There was no contact dancing — the hustle was pretty much on its way out — but it was just an amazing experience to see all the cultures together. It was a fusion of cultures, which described my life and my band, so I was right at home there.”
“Studio 54 was the place,” adds Linda Clifford. “Crazy parties. If you could think it, you would see it. It was like a circus. Just an amazing place to be. I worked 54 so many times. It was like a second home to me. The people there treated me so well. The crowd always seemed to enjoy my show. I always had a good time with them. That was the most important thing: making sure that they had fun.”
Well before Studio 54 opened, disco had become a business juggernaut. “A four billion dollar market and still growing,” Billboard announced in February 1977, with dance music offering more variety than ever. “There is no longer a single, readily identifiable disco beat, but a kaleidoscope of sounds that are melodic and danceable,” Tom Moulton told the magazine. In the clubs, records by veteran artists like Stevie Wonder and the Bee Gees were mixed in with a range of new acts like Grace Jones, Boney M., and The Ritchie Family, while everyone from ABBA to Marvin Gaye scored number one pop hits with songs that had club-centric storylines.
Beyond the charts, disco itself remained as idiosyncratic as ever, especially on several productions by Laurin Rinder and W. Michael Lewis, whose studio creations, El Coco (“Let’s Get It Together,” “Cocomotion”) and Le Pamplemousse (“Le Spank”), joined their own “Lust” from Seven Deadly Sins (1977) among the most tantalizing releases on AVI Records. Rinder & Lewis also produced acts for the newly hatched Butterfly Records in Los Angeles, where Saint Tropez (“On a Rien à Perdre”) and Tuxedo Junction (“Moonlight Serenade”) reflected the duo’s high gloss sound, spanning everything from European sophistication to a more literal translation of the ’40s sensibilities popularized by Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band.
12-inch singles had also grown as the preferred format to approximate the club music experience at home. Nearly a year after Atlantic Records introduced its series of promotional 12-inch singles for DJs, New York-based Salsoul Records released the industry’s first commercially available 12-inch single, “Ten Percent” by Double Exposure, in May 1976. A year later, T.K. Records was the first label to certify a gold record for a 12-inch single when Peter Brown’s “Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me” tallied one million sales.— Christian John Wikane
(From “A Night at the Disco” by Alice Harris & Christian John Wikane. Published by ACC Art Books.)
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
a&e features
Award-winning D.C. chef reaching new culinary heights
Anthony Jones of Marcus DC competing on ‘Top Chef’
In Anthony Jones’s kitchen, all sorts of flags fly, including his own. Executive chef at award-winning restaurant Marcus DC, Jones has reached culinary heights (James Beard Award semifinalist for Emerging Chef, anyone?), yet he’s just getting started.
Briefly stepping away from his award-winning station, Jones took a moment under a different set of lights. Recently, he temporarily gave up his post at the restaurant for a starring small-screen slot on the latest season of “Top Chef,” which debuted in March. (The show airs weekly on Bravo and Peacock).
Before his strategic slice-and-dice competition, however, Jones, who identifies as gay, draws from his deep DMV roots. In the years before “Top Chef” and the top chef spot at Marcus, he was born and raised in Sunderland, Md., in southern Maryland, near the Chesapeake.
Early memories were steeped in afternoons on boats with his dad bonding over fishing, and wandering the garden of his great-grandparents spread with fresh vegetables and a few hogs. “It was Southern, old-school ethics and upbringing,” he said. “Family and food went hand in hand.” Weekends meant grabbing bushels of crabs, dad and grandma would cook and crack them. Family members would host fish fries for extra cash. In this seafood-heavy youth, Jones managed time to sneak in episodes of the “OG” Japanese “Iron Chef” show, which helped inspire him to pursue a career in the kitchen.
Jones moved to D.C. after graduating from college, ending up at lauded Restaurant Eve, and met famed chef Marcus Samuelson, who brought him to Miami to be part of the opening team for Red Rooster Overtown. After three years, Jones moved back to D.C., where he ran Dirty Habit, reinventing and reimagining the menu, integrating West African flavors and ingredients.
Samuelson, however, wouldn’t let a talent like Jones stay away for too long. Pulling Jones back into his orbit, Samuelson elevated Jones to help him open his namesake restaurant Marcus DC, which has been named a top-five restaurant by the Washington Post. Since then, Jones has been nominated as a semifinalist for the RAMMYs Rising Culinary Star in 2026 and won the Eater DC’s Rising Chef award in 2025.
Samuelson’s Marcus is a tour de force interpreting the Black Diaspora on the plate, from the American South to West Africa, along with his signature “Swedopian” touches. Yet it’s Jones who has deeply informed the plate, elevating his own story to date. Marcus DC is primarily a seafood restaurant, which serves Jones well.
“Where I’m from is seafood heavy, and as I’ve progressed in my career, I’ve moved away from meat.” Veggies and fish are hero dishes. His own dish, Mel’s Crab Rice, was not only lauded by the Washington Post, but is framed by his youth carrying home the crustaceans from Mel’s crab truck. It’s a bowl of Carolina rice, layered with pickled okra, uni béarnaise, and crab. Jones also points to a dish on the opening menu, rockfish and brassica, paying respect to a landmark D.C. institution, Ben’s Chili Bowl. Jones reverse engineered a favorite bowl of chili that’s seafood instead of meat forward, leveraging octopus and rockfish along with different riffs of cauliflower: showing his intellectual, creative, and cultural sides.
While “Top Chef” is showing Jones’s spotlight side, he also lets his identity show at work. “In the kitchen, I make sure we’re inclusive. We don’t tolerate discrimination. Everyone that’s here should feel confident to express themselves. There are so many different flags in the kitchen.”
Jones says that he didn’t fully express his gay identity until fairly recently. He felt reluctant coming out to certain family members, “you’re scared to tell them about being different,” he says, and while that anxiety ate at him, “I’m lucky and fortunate to have unconditional love and that weight off my shoulders.”
Today, “I’m me all the time, Monday to Sunday. I’m honest with people, and my staff is honest with me.”
“Being a chef is hard,” he says, “and being a chef of color is even more difficult.”
Yet his LGBTQ identity is a juggling act, he says. “I need to keep that balance, because once someone finds out something about you, their opinion can change, whether you want it or not.”
Being on a whole season of TV cooking competition, however, might mean millions more might have an opinion of him (Jones has appeared on TV already, on an episode of “Chopped”). To prepare, he says, “I’ve just kept a level head. It’s just an honor to be on top chef with amazing people happy to be there.”
Plus, this season is set in the Carolinas, and Jones attended Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, N.C. “It’s a full story of my life, now a monumental moment for me.”
Jones also recently was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award. “JBF has been a north star, a dream for so long. I always had this goal on my wall.”
Being at the top spot at Marcus DC, making waves through his accolades, and cooking on Bravo means that Jones is highly visible. “I think that if someone has a similar background to me, and can see our story, trajectory, and success, they can have more ability to be themselves. This is my goal.”
Back at Marcus, Jones has plenty up his chef’s white’s sleeves. A new spring menu is in the works. He’ll be launching a new tasting menu “dining experience,” he says, and has plans to work on more events and collaborations with chefs and friends to bring in new talent and share the culinary wealth.
a&e features
Introducing the Torchbearers Awards honoring queer, trans women and nonbinary people
Meet the Legends and Illuminators lighting new paths
The Torchbearers Awards are more than recognition—they are a continuation of legacy. They honor the quiet architects of progress in our community: those who organize, advocate, build, and protect, often without fanfare but always with purpose. Rooted in a belief in intentional recognition, this honor names those who carry our movements forward—those who make room for others, who remind us that change is both generational and generative. In a time marked by uncertainty and challenge, these leaders push forward with courage, clarity, and an unwavering commitment to expanding opportunity and equity.
This year’s honorees reflect the full breadth of our community, spanning generations, backgrounds, identities, and industries. From Legends, with decades of leadership and having created pathways for others, to Illuminators, who are lighting new paths with creativity and innovation, each Torchbearer represents the power of intergenerational leadership and the strength found in our diversity. They are organizers, advocates, artists, policy leaders, healers, and changemakers whose lived experiences shape a shared vision for equity and liberation.
This award is our love letter to queer and trans women and nonbinary people who carry the flame when it would be easier to let it dim. To those who consistently show up, who use their voice and visibility and stand firm, often without recognition, so that others may live more freely and fully. The Torchbearers Awards celebrates not just what has been done, but the enduring spirit, responsibility, and collective care that ensure the work continues, and that the flame is always passed forward.
Co-Creators of the Torchbearers Awards: Shannon Alston, June Crenshaw, Heidi Ellis
Torchbearers Awards Advisory Board: Aditi Hardikar, Lesley Bryant, Jasmine Wilson-Bryant, Stephen Rutgers
ILLUMINATOR AWARDEES
- Representative Sharice Davids (she/her), (D, KS-03)
— U.S. House of Representatives - Greisa Martinez Rosas (she/her/ella)
— Executive Director, United We Dream - Paola Ramos (she/her)
— Journalist & Correspondent - Meagan A. Fitzgerald (she/her)
— Journalist & Correspondent - Jessica L. Lewis (she/her)
— Founder / Producer, Play Play DC - Savannah Wade (she/her)
— Founder, OAR Agency - Suhad Babaa (she/her)
— Filmmaker/ Former Executive Director of Just Vision - Ashlee Davis (she/her)
— Global Head of Inclusive Outcomes, Ancestry - Jazmine Hughes (she/her)
— Journalist and Former Editor at New York Times Magazine - Queen Adesuyi (they/she)
— Policy Advisor & Organizer, ReFrame Health & Justice - Michele Rayner, Esq. (she/her)
— Civil Rights Attorney, State Representative (Florida House of Representatives) - Gaby Vincent (she/her)
— Sports/Cultural Commentator and Community Leader - Jenny Nguyen (she/her)
— Founder & Owner, The Sports Bra - Denice Frohman (she/her)
— Independent Artist, Poet / Performer - Vida Rangel (she/her)
— Founder, Our Trans Capital - Roxanne Anderson (they/them)
— Executive Director, Our Space - Ann Marie Gothard (she/her)
— Co-Founder & President, Pride Live (Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center) - Diana Rodriquez (she/her)
— Co-Founder & CEO, Pride Live (Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center) - Wendi Cooper (she/her)
— Founder / Executive Director, Transcending Women - Toya Matthews (she/her)
— City of San Antonio, Texas - Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones (she/her)
— Sports/Cultural Commentator and Community Leader - Charity Blackwell (she/her)
— Poet, LGBTQ Advocate & Community Leader - Wilhelmina Indermaur (she/her)
— Director of Communications, Tyler Clementi Foundation - Em Chadwick (she/her)
— CMO, For Them & Autostraddle - Kylo Freeman (they/he)
— CEO, For Them & Autostraddle
LEGEND AWARDEES
- Sheila Alexander-Reid (she/her)
— Executive Director, PHL Diversity, Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau - Cassandra Cantave Burton (she/her)
— Interim Director of Thought Leadership & Senior Research Advisor, AARP - leigh h. mosley (she/her)
— Photographer / Educator, PhotoFlo Photography - Jenn M. Jackson, PhD (they/them)
— Assistant Professor of Political Science; Author & Columnist, Syracuse University - Jordyn White (she/her)
— COO, Washington Prodigy / VP of Leadership Development & Research, HRC Foundation - AJ Hikes (they/them)
— Deputy Executive Director, ACLU - RaeShanda Lias (she/her)
— Digital Creator, RL Lockhart - Donna Payne-Hardy (she/her)
— Educator, EEO Specialist, Founder of NBJC, Former Leader at the Human Rights Campaign - Courtney R. Snowden (she/her)
— Principal, Blueprint Strategy Group - Gaye Adegbalola (she/her)
— Musician & Activist, Musician / Inductee of the Blues Hall of Fame - Cheryl A. Head (she/her)
— Independent Author, Novelist (Crime Fiction) - Letitia Gomez (she/her)
— The American LGBTQ+ Museum, Board Chair - Lynne Brown (she/her)
— Publisher, Washington Blade - Shay Franco-Clausen (She/Her/Ella/Queen)
— Political Strategist and Organizer - Melissa L. Bradley (she/her)
— Founder & Managing Partner, New Majority Ventures - Meghann Burke (she/her)
— Executive Director, NWSL Players Association - Victoria Kirby York, MPA (she/they)
— Director of Public Policy & Programs, National Black Justice Collective - Joli Angel Robinson (she/her)
— CEO, Center on Halsted - Jeannine Frisby LaRue (she/her)
— CEO, Moxie Strategies - Alice Wu (she/her)
— Film Director (Saving Face, The Half of It) / Screenwriter - Storme Webber (she/her)
— Interdisciplinary Artist / Educator, University of Washington - Kim Stone
— CEO of the Washington Spirit, Washington Spirit - Mickalene Thomas
— American Visual Artist, Mickalene Thomas Studio - Erika Lorshbough (any/they/she)
— Executive Director, interACT - J. Gia Loving (she/ella)
— Co-Executive Director, GSA Network
Minimal version of ‘Streetcar Named Desire’ heading to Dupont Underground
Comings & Goings
An effort to increase the number of psychiatrists of color
Calendar: April 10-16
BLUF leather social set for April 10 in Rehoboth
Police mental health struggles gain growing attention
Man faces first S.C. ‘hate intimidation’ charge
Cuba under pressure and without answers
Tenn. lawmakers pass transgender “watch list” bill
