The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) on Thursday announced the appointment of Cecilia Wichmann as Curator and Department Head of Contemporary Art.
Wichmann joined the BMA in 2017 as an Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art and was promoted to Associate Curator in 2019. She has organized or co-organized many important exhibitions, including the recent Joyce J. Scott: Walk a Mile in My Dreams retrospective, for which she also served as co-editor of a related catalog distributed by Yale University Press. She replaces Jessica Bell Brown, who left the BMA to become Executive Director of the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.
Wichmann has worked closely with many other artists with deep ties to the region, including Nekisha Durrett, Martha Jackson Jarvis, Jackie Milad, Stephen Towns, and SHAN Wallace, and she spearheaded the acquisition of more than 150 contemporary artworks, including Jefferson Pinder’s Ben-Hur, the first work of performance art to enter the collection.
“Cecilia Wichmann is one of the most imaginative and experimental curators working in the field today. She deeply values collaboration and rigorous art historical research, both of which are core to the BMA’s programmatic vision,” said Asma Naeem, the BMA’s Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director, in a statement.
“Her commitment to artists, to centering the cultural communities of Baltimore, and to illuminating new, compelling, and under-sung narratives and creative expressions are essential to realizing the museum’s next chapter. I am grateful for Cecilia’s abiding dedication to Baltimore and the BMA, and look forward to working with her on many exciting projects to come.”
Wichmann’s achievements include co-organizing the reinstallation of the BMA’s contemporary art galleries, Every Day: Selections from the Collection (2019), and curating Elle Pérez: Devotions (2022); Tschabalala Self: By My Self (2021); Elissa Blount Moorhead and Bradford Young: Back and Song (2020); SHAN Wallace: 410 (2020); Ellen Lesperance: Velvet Fist (2020); Shinique Smith: Grace Stands Beside and Breathing Room (2020); Clifford Owens: Five Anthology Scores (2019); and Hitching Their Dreams to Untamed Stars: Joyce J. Scott and Elizabeth Talford Scott (2019).
She also assisted with curatorial conceptualization as part of the research team for Joan Mitchell (2022), and co-curated Histories Collide: Jackie Milad x Fred Wilson x Nekisha Durrett (2023) and Martha Jackson Jarvis: What the Trees Have Seen (2023). With Guest Curator George Ciscle, she organized Eyewinkers, Tumbleturds, and Candlebugs: The Art of Elizabeth Talford Scott, and initiated the “No Stone Left Unturned: Elizabeth Talford Scott Community Initiative” in partnership with four university and four museums across Baltimore City (2023-2024). As Assistant Curator, Wichmann organized Stephen Towns: Rumination and a Reckoning (2018); Sondheim Artscape Prize Finalists (2018); Ebony G. Patterson:… for little whispers… (2018); and Head Back and High: Senga Nengudi, Performance Objects (1976-2015) (2017).
Before joining the BMA, Wichmann was Curator of the Stamp Gallery at University of Maryland, College Park, and oversaw their Contemporary Art Purchasing Program Collection. From 2007 to 2013, she served in the communications department at The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. Wichmann holds a B.A. from University of Toronto and M.A. from University of Maryland, College Park, where she is a Ph.D. candidate.
