As part of its broader strategy to engage with the local community, the Baltimore Museum of Art has opened a branch inside Lexington Market, the city’s vast and storied indoor food hall. The location opened with an exhibition of photographs by local youth, but the museum plans to develop the overall concept as it hears feedback from visitors.
“Unlike museums, which move at sort of a self-consciously glacial pace, the idea with this is to be deeply responsive to need,” Christopher Bedford, the BMA’s director, said in an interview. “We want this to have the metabolism of a small, highly responsive not-for-profit that’s embedded in the community and listening to that community.”
For more than two centuries, Lexington Market has been one of Baltimore's great meeting places, a jam-packed base of operations for hundreds of vendors, from butchers to produce specialists to fortune tellers. These days, it's home to more than 50 businesses, including a bounty of different eateries, and beginning today they have a new neighbor: a branch of the Baltimore Museum of Art.