"Layers of Love" will be installed at the intersection of Charles and North Ave. Wesley Clark’s goal, from the start, was to project a universally positive idea or sentiment desired by all: love, protection, safety, and family. These are the concepts that, in all stages of life, we humans, at our core, need to thrive.

"Layers of Love" depicts these ideas through a nesting doll-like family embrace. This sculpture portrays what some may call the archetypical or ideal family structure – a father and mother holding their two children. Yet, while the family as an institution is still held in high regard, what constitutes family in today's society has broadened.

In acknowledgment of this, Clark chose to incorporate this quote about family: "Having somewhere to go is home. Having someone to love is family. Having both is a blessing." This quote will be engraved into the sculpture, wrapping around the back and sides, providing visual interest from all sides. The font will be large enough to be read at a distance when traveling east on North Ave.

The sculpture's outer finish will be layered to a thickness of 1 inch to 1-1/2 inches, stamped and carved concrete, designed to resemble rough-hewn slate. At its outermost dimensions, the sculpture will stand 6 feet tall, 5 feet wide, with a depth of 6 feet. With a curb height of 6 to 8 inches and roughly an additional 16 inches of height for the existing concrete slab, the final height of the sculpture will stand about 8 feet in relation to pedestrians.

Target installation September 2023.

Learn more about Wesley on his personal website: Wesley Clark

This playful sculpture on the Lexington Market Plaza explores our complex, but also fun and nostalgic, relationships with food through colorful folded pipe shapes meant for interaction. Lead artist Reed Bmore is known for their often unsanctioned and surprising bent wire sculptures hung at stoplights and street corners throughout Baltimore and other cities; he is a Baltimore resident and Maryland Institute College of Art graduate and completed this piece in collaboration with metalworkers Nick Ireys and Eric Smith.

Learn more about Reed on their instagram: Reed Bmore

This piece on the Lexington Market Plaza pays homage to the two recorded instances of enslaved persons either being sold at the Market or hunted because of their connection to it. The piece seeks to seismically shift the principal idea behind ‘exchanging goods’ at the Market by displaying forged metal panels of the two individuals, Robert and Rosetta, to stand as aberrations to what one would advertise as ‘value.’ DeVane, the project’s lead, is a multidisciplinary artist who explores diverse political, social identities and cultural interpretations. Her work is in permanent museum collections at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, and she has exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Museum of the Bible in NY, and Museum of the Americas in Washington DC, among others. She did this piece in partnership with her son, multidisciplinary artist Chris Kojzar.

Learn more about Oletha on her personal website: Oletha DeVane

In the summer of 2006, one block away from its East Harbor campus, the Living Classrooms Foundation opened a new campus in Fells Point, the Douglass­Myers Maritime Park and Museum, to celebrate the contributions of the African American community in the development of the city's maritime industry. The new facility is named for Frederick Douglass, who lived in Baltimore and worked in the city shipyards, and Isaac Myers, who led fourteen other free blacks in founding the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Drydock Company, the first African American-owned shipyard in the country.

At the Douglass-Myers Maritime Park, Living Classrooms focuses its public programming and em­ployment training on at-risk youth. It includes an industrial warehouse, a working shipyard, a historic marine railway, hands-on exhibits, and sculpture hon­oring both Douglass and Myers. Marc Andre Robin­son's sculpture honoring Douglass is a heroic-scale head cast in bronze and installed directly on the red brick entrance plaza, not far from the harbor. It is a very good likeness of Douglass, as good a likeness as James E. Lewis captured more than fifty years earlier in his statue of Douglass for Morgan State University (K8). But that is the only similarity in the two works .

Here, the sculptor focuses only on the physiog­nomy of Douglass' head and succeeds in revealing Douglass' intellect, his determination, and his human­ity. Douglass' furrowed brow, his focused eyes, his set mouth, even the slightest tilt of his head, all contribute to a sense of the man he became. The suggestion that this head may have been dropped and broken into fragments, since sections of bronze are held in place by steel rods, clearly visible from the back, cannot diminish the power of his presence, surely an inspiring one to the youth of Baltimore who come here to learn.

Robinson received his BFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 1998 and his MFA from the Maryland Institute in 2002. A nearby text panel states that his choice of bronze as a material of great permanence was meant to reflect the indelible commitment of Living Classrooms to Baltimore youth.

Source: Kelly, Cindy, Outdoor Sculpture in Baltimore: A Historical Guide to Public Art in the Monumental City, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.

Male/Female is a 15.5-meter (51 ft) tall hollow stainless steel sculpture by Jonathan Borofsky standing at the entrance to Pennsylvania Station in Baltimore, Maryland. It depicts intersecting colossal male and female forms with pulsing light-emitting diode light.

A “Working Point” by David Hess is a point designated on an architectural or construction drawing that is used as a reference for measurements and calculations. This sculpture is composed of 90 tons of obsolete machinery and equipment from a number of Baltimore’s industries, donated to create something new from pieces of the past.

Time Flies (Christy Rupp)

This piece was one of the fifteen artworks commissioned for the 1996 Artscape exhibition, Celebrating Rinehart, and one of five pieces to remain on site. It was also one of four pieces funded in part by the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore City to inaugurate a new Revolving Sculpture Project, whose aim was to place long-term temporary sculptures around the Maryland Institute campus. The snail that appears to be slowly climbing up the wall of the college store, weighted down by the clock mounted in its shell, was a charming and humorous addition to the exhibition celebrating the centennial of the Rinehart School of Sculpture.

Source: Kelly, Cindy, Outdoor Sculpture in Baltimore: A Historical Guide to Public Art in the Monumental City, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.

A dense, complex mass of images drawn from the gar­ment industry-hats, scissors, ribbons, and threads and men and women in coats, suits, and dresses-are com­bined with very expressive figures of runners, fighters, divers, dancers, and dogs, not to mention Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing together one last time. What could this mean? Why were these silhouette images cut out of brightly painted steel and inserted into the framework of five arches of an expansive gateway across Redwood Street? The answer lies in the artist's exami­nation of and reflection on the rich history of this site. After commissioning David Gerlach to create a piece of sculpture for Howard's Park, the Market Center Development Corporation teamed up with Maryland Art Place, a not-for-profit center for contemporary art in Baltimore, to develop a more comprehensive pub­lic art program that would contribute significantly to their development of this west-side downtown urban ­renewal area. Maryland Art Place helped with site selection and with designing an artist-selection process. Linda DePalilla was chosen to create a new public art­work for Redwood Street, and Jeff Schiff was selected to create one for Liberty Plaza that would visually connect the east and west sides of Liberty Street.

DePalma set about celebrating the industries for­merly housed along this street as well as the new ones related to the medical fields. For the intersection of Red­wood and South Paca streets, DePalma designed the largest and most celebratory element –the gateway– with a main arch spanning the roadway that stands 24 feet high and a series of smaller pedestrian arches defin­ing the walkways. At the east end of the block where Redwood intersects with South Eutaw Street, DePalma placed two single columns to punctuate the streetscape. The figures on the tops of these two columns were clearly cut from the main gateway at the opposite end of the street. Easily recognizable on the south side of the street is Leonardo's ideal man. The young woman leaping through a cutout of a man in a large overcoat on the opposite side of the street is a direct reference to Ground Play, DePalma's concurrent public artwork made for the Maryland Transit Administration's Old Court Metro Station.

This public artwork can be interpreted as reflect­ing the transitional nature of the neighborhood for which it was created. Some figures relate to the history of the site, and some relate to its current use, but almost every figure is active, energized, as the area is today. Optimistic, engaging and challenging, the piece offers many narratives of the past, the present, and the future. DePalma suggested that the gateway could be seen as a metaphor for the garment district, with the viewer as a tailor. The silhouettes are the patterns that can be con­structed or stitched together, but instead of ending up with a piece of clothing, the viewer creates one of these narratives, uncovering the stories so beautifully embedded in the piece.

Source: Kelly, Cindy, Outdoor Sculpture in Baltimore: A Historical Guide to Public Art in the Monumental City, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.

This work by Jonathan Silver is one of the Munici­pal Art Society's more recent gifts to the city. After an exhibition of Silver's work in 1987 at the C. Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore, members of the society expressed a willingness to purchase a piece of his sculpture for the city if a suitable site could be found. The current site in Charles Center, in a quiet, tree-shaded area in the southeast corner of Hopkins Plaza, was chosen, and the piece was installed and dedicated on January 27, 1989.

The bronze piece, very typical of Silver's sculp­ture, is reminiscent of Alberto Giacometti, whose work Silver studied as an art history graduate student with Meyer Schapiro at Columbia University. The figure of Venus is attenuated yet elegant in its graceful form, which dissolves into pure material at many different points. The arms, the legs, and even the face are at once figurative and amorphous. This mysterious quality gives the piece a certain power, lending the rather slight figure its monumentality.

Source: Kelly, Cindy, Outdoor Sculpture in Baltimore: A Historical Guide to Public Art in the Monumental City, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.

The tall windscreen designed for Penn Station com­prises sixty slabs of steel, each 10 feet high, about 12 inches wide, and ½ inch thick. The designs cut into the metal edges of each slab are unique and give a rhythmic flow across the wide-open space leading from the train station toward St. Paul Street, framing the northern perimeter of a small parking lot beside the station and acting as a barrier fence for the railroad tracks below. The slabs stand at a slight angle to the low wall to which they are attached and are silhouetted against the sky. For his sculpture, William Leizman always used Mayari-R steel, which for years was made at the nearby Bethlehem Steel Company. Like Cor-Ten, Mayari-R steel is a weathering steel that cures beautifully, form­ing a rich brown velvety surface that can still be detected here.

Leizman went to the steel plant and supervised workmen as they flame-cut his designs into the steel slabs. After they were cut, each 300-pound slab was then bent using a 250-pound press. The pieces were then shipped to the site, and Leizman bolted them into place himself. The project took two years to complete. Originally sited on the west side of the train station, where it could be seen from N. Charles Street and where it welcomed travelers into a side door, the piece was relocated to the east side of the station during renova­tions in 2004.

Source: Kelly, Cindy, Outdoor Sculpture in Baltimore: A Historical Guide to Public Art in the Monumental City, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.

Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson were childhood heroes of J. Henry Ferguson (1849-1928), a bachelor banker who organized the Colonial Trust Company and served as its president until his death. He left $100,000 in his will for the creation of a public monument to the two men, whom he wanted held up as good examples for the youth of Maryland. Ferguson had stipulated that the money for the monument could come to the city only after the death of his sister, Mrs. Ella F. Ward. When she died in 1934, the money and very specific instructions were given to the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore City, the organization chosen by Ferguson to organize a design competition and over­see the creation of the monument.

Ferguson's will spelled out exactly what should be represented, what the inscriptions should be, and who should serve as members of the jury for a limited competition. These individuals were also charged with selecting the site for the monument, which had to be within ten miles of City Hall.

Six sculptors were invited to take part in the com­petition, held in 1935: Lee Lawrie, Paul Manship, and Edward McCartan, all of New York; F. William Sievers, of Richmond, Virginia; Hans Schuler, then director of the Maryland Institute in Baltimore; and Laura Gardin Fraser, of Westport, Connecticut. Fraser won. She was one of the very few women who distinguished them­selves in the field of sculpture in the first half of the century. When she won this competition, she was best known as a designer of medals. She was the first woman to receive the Saltus Medal, the highest award for medal designers in the United States. Fraser designed and cre­ated more that one hundred medals. Among her most important designs were for the congressional medals honoring George C. Marshall, Charles Lindbergh, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Admiral Rich­ard E. Byrd. Fraser was also known as an animalier. She had always had a passion for horses and had created many polo trophies, all portraits of famous horses. She was married to another well-known sculptor, James Earl Fraser, who had been her teacher. She was elected to the National Sculpture Society in 1912, the National Academy of Design in 1931, and the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1931.

Source: Kelly, Cindy, Outdoor Sculpture in Baltimore: A Historical Guide to Public Art in the Monumental City, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.

Sidney Lanier (1842-81) was a poet, tutor, soldier, lec­turer, clerk, scholar, linguist, novelist, and musician, all before the age of 39, when he died while living in his adopted city of Baltimore. At the time of his death, he was considered one of the country's great poets, ranking just after Poe, Whitman, and Emerson.

While in Baltimore, Lanier wrote most of his best­ known poems –“The Marshes of Glenn," "The Sym­phony,” "Psalm of the West," "Ballad of Trees and the Master,” and "Ode to the Johns Hopkins University." These few short years, from 1873 to 1881, were the hap­piest of his life. He worked incessantly on the public lectures that he gave at Hopkins and Peabody and above all on his poetry, for which many felt he had forsaken his first love, music. But by 1881 he had entered the last stages of his consumption and had moved temporarily with his family to Ashville, North Carolina, for the heal­ing air of the mountains. It was there that he died, just after completing "Sunrise,” considered one of his great­est poems.

A line from this last poem –“I am lit by the sun”–­ appears on his grave marker in the Turnbull family plot, and it is referred to in the relief behind the seated fig­ure of Lanier in the monument commissioned by the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore City to mark the centenary of his birth. Just to the left of the two female figures representing the muses of poetry and music can be seen the sun and the sun's rays on the horizon.

On February 3, 1942, on what would have been Lanier's one hundredth birthday, Johns Hopkins presi­dent Isaiah Bowman accepted the gift of Hans Schuler's unique monument from R. E. Lee Taylor, president of the Municipal Art Society. Gilman had described Lanier as "striking in appearance, his looks, manner and speech distinctive.” Those words and his person­ally rewarding life in Baltimore as an acclaimed flutist and poet are reflected in this unusual portrait. Lanier is depicted with the long beard seen in all representations of him, even though it makes him appear older than his years. He is shown seated on a cluster of natural boulders placed in front of a huge bas-relief. He is for­mally dressed, and his tall, elegant frame is much in evidence. Schuler chose to present Lanier deep in thought, working on a poem, evidenced by his gaze focused on the book in his lap and the pencil in his right hand. His flute is nearby, a clear reflection that poetry and music both contributed to the happiness he experienced in Baltimore, most notably his appointment to the faculty of Johns Hopkins. The tinge of sadness inherent in the monument serves to mark the shortness of his life and raises the question how much more he might have achieved.

Source: Kelly, Cindy, Outdoor Sculpture in Baltimore: A Historical Guide to Public Art in the Monumental City, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.

Sometime before World War I the Municipal Art Soci­ety decided to erect and give to the city a memorial to Johns Hopkins (1795-1873) in recognition of his gen­erosity in founding both the university and the hospital that today bear his name. These early plans were inter­rupted by the war but were revived in the early 1930s. Hans Schuler was chosen as the sculptor, and he was to work in association with the architect William Gordon Beecher.

The site chosen for the monument was an oval at the intersection of N. Charles and 34th streets, directly opposite the entrance to the university's Homewood campus. Included in these early plans were two foun­tains, one on the north side of the monument and one on the south.

Schuler proposed that there be a heroic bronze bust of Johns Hopkins on top of a tall marble pylon, with two allegorical figures seated at its base, on the east-west axis of the monument. The female figure on the east side, with bare breasts, a laurel wreath in her hair, holding a bowl from which a snake twists around and up her arm, would represent healing and the hospital; the male figure opposite her, with a bare chest, beautiful flowing drapery over his crossed legs, and a scroll spread across his lap, would represent learning and the university. The inclusion of flowing water was to be symbolic of the enduring benefits of this gift to the city and the world.

Source: Kelly, Cindy, Outdoor Sculpture in Baltimore: A Historical Guide to Public Art in the Monumental City, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.

“Boy and Turtle” succinctly demonstrates Crenier’s adherence to Beaux-Arts sculptural principles in the animated post of the nude and the expressive treatment of the bronze surface.

The boy’s unbalanced stance and splayed fingers and toes reveal a momentary sense of surprise as he and his small foe confront one another. Crenier’s younger son, Guy, recalled that when his older brother, Pierre, then twelve, posed for the piece, the sculptor placed a box under the boy’s foot to allow him to maintain the spontaneous-seeming position.

Modeled and cast in 1912, “Boy and Turtle” was conceived as a demonstration fountain with the hope of attracting a commission for a full-scale garden piece. A piping system under the base enables a small jet of water to spray upward from the turtle’s mouth.

A lifesize bronze cast was later ordered by the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore and donated to the city; it was installed as a fountain in Mount Vernon Place in 1924.

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Severn Teackle Wallis (1816-94) was a prominent lawyer in Baltimore during the nineteenth century. He began his brilliant career after being admitted to the bar in 1835, at the age of 19. Later recognized as a wit, a reformer, a poet, a linguist, and an orator, he was Baltimore's lead­ing citizen for almost half a century. His court appear­ances brought out many colleagues, who would come to hear him argue some obscure point of law as if he had made a lifelong study of it. He could have been elected governor or senator or been appointed a cabinet offi­cer, but he was content to remain a local figure. When the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore City decided to erect statues to men who had played an important part in Maryland history, they chose to commission monu­ments first to John Eager Howard and next to Wal­lis, noting that Wallis had laid the foundation for civil ­service reform. In erecting this monument, the society also underscored its belief that "direction is everything, distance nothing," for Wallis died before his reform goals were reached.

Wallis, who remained a bachelor all of his life, devoted much of his energy to the arts. He was a trustee of both the Peabody Institute and the Maryland Insti­tute. He was in fact the juror for an exhibition at the Maryland Institute in 1851 in which William Rinehart first entered a piece of sculpture. Wallis gave Rinehart first place and remained a patron and strong supporter of Rinehart's throughout his career. He was the driving force on the committee that commissioned Rinehart to create a monument to Roger B. Taney, and he spoke at the dedication of that statue in Annapolis in 1872. A replica of the statue was given to the city and stands in the north square.

Laurent Honoré Marqueste was one of the most distinguished French artists of his day. He was born in Toulouse and died in Paris. He won the Prix de Rome in 1871 and made his Salon debut in 1874 in Paris. There­after, Marqueste was awarded many first prizes in expo­sitions in France and across Europe. His reputation was well established. Henry Walters suggested him for this commission, and negotiations were carried out in Paris by his fell ow Baltimorean, art collector and agent George A. Lucas.

To complete a full standing portrait of Wallis, Mar­queste was sent a suit that had belonged to Wallis and a photographic portrait of him. No detail was unim­portant. Wallis is shown standing, with his weight on his left leg, his right leg slightly bent at the knee and placed forward to the edge of the base. He is elegantly dressed in his suit and a knee-length coat. His right hand rests on a pedestal, on which his papers are spread. He looks to his left and off to the distance. His moustache, muttonchop whiskers, and slightly bald head are prom­inent features.

This monument, originally sited in the south square, was moved to its present location in 1920.

Source: Kelly, Cindy, Outdoor Sculpture in Baltimore: A Historical Guide to Public Art in the Monumental City, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.

John Eager Howard (1752-1827) was George Wash­ington's chief of staff and Maryland's most distin­guished Revolutionary War hero. In the battle of Cowpens in South Carolina in 1781, he led his men into the threatening line of the enemy, exhibiting great military valor, and as a result was credited with bring­ing about a victory.

The Municipal Art Society of Baltimore City, cre­ated in 1899 for "public and educational purposes and especially to provide adequately for sculpture and pic­torial decoration for public buildings, streets and open spaces in the city of Baltimore and to help generally beautify the city," set about erecting statues to men who had played an important part in the history of Mary­land. Since John Eager Howard had not been chosen to be memorialized in bronze for the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol-Charles Carroll and John Hanson were chosen instead-which members of the Municipal Art Society thought was a mistake, the first monument the society presented to the city was of Howard at the moment of his greatest wartime victory.

To create an equestrian monument of Howard, the society commissioned one of the foremost French sculp­tors of the nineteenth century, Emmanuel Frémiet. Next to Barye, who was an early rival, Frémiet was consid­ered the finest French animalier. He received his first public commission at the age of 25 and is best known for his 1874 equestrian monument to Jeanne d'Arc in the Place des Pyramides in Paris.

Source: Kelly, Cindy, Outdoor Sculpture in Baltimore: A Historical Guide to Public Art in the Monumental City, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.

The Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown
Unveiled December 8, 1910

The Municipal Art Society commissioned Jean Paul Laurens at a sum of $13,000 to paint four large mural paintings for the Orphan’s Court of Baltimore City depicting the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown on October 19, 1781. Panels 1 and 2 depict the British and Hessians armies of 8,000 men in compliance with the articles of capitulation and are flanked on either side by the French and Continental armies. Panel 3 depicts General O’Hara surrendering to General George Washington, because General Cornwallis had sent word that he was ill, and remained behind. The painting was executed and briefly displayed in Paris, France before it was brought to the courthouse.

A plaque below panel 3 reads as follows:

To the Memory of the Maryland Line:

This decoration was provided by an initial gift from the Maryland Line Chapter,

Daughters of the American Revolution, supplemented by gifts from the Municipal Arts Society, and private individuals and principally, by the liberality of the city of Baltimore.

Source: The Maryland State Archives

During the first year of its existence, the Municipal Art Society undertook the commissioning of the first of many murals to decorate the new courthouse, then under construction. While uncertain whether the Society commissioned these particular murals, it seems likely since these are among the earliest.

Ancient Lawgivers
Unveiled 1907

1. Justinian (527-565 A.D.)
Justinian is best known as the codifier of Roman Law and for his military conquests.

2. Lycurgus (c. 800 B.C.)
Lycurgus is depicted as consulting the Oracle at Delphi.

3. Mohammed (570-632 A.D.)
Mohammed is depicted in Paradise with two of his favorite grand-children.

4. Confucius (551- 479 B.C.)
Confucius is seated under his favorite apple tree playing the lyre for two of his disciples.

5. Moses (c. 13th B.C.)
Moses is depicted with Joshua and Aaron on Mt. Sinai.

6. Numma Pompilius (715-673 B.C.)
Numma Pompilius, the second legendary king of Rome is shown with the Empress Theodora. Numma, according to legend, is credited with establishing the origins of Roman ceremonial law and religious rites, and restructuring the calendar into days for business and holidays.

Source: The Maryland State Archives