The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) will open a new exhibition, Engaging the Elements: Poetry in Nature, on September 17. The exhibition features nearly 20 works from the museum’s collection, including photographs, prints, drawings, and textiles that explore how artists have depicted air, water, earth, and fire. The show will be on view through February 8, 2026.
Engaging the Elements examines how art reflects changing attitudes toward nature and environmental issues. The selected works range from William Morris’ handmade textile Rose (1883) to Jowita Wyszomirska’s Nothing Gold Can Stay 2 (2023). Other notable pieces include Larry Schwarm’s Wheat Stubble Fire, Eastern Colorado (1992), Yao Lu’s View of Waterfall with Rocks and Pines (2007), Winslow Homer’s Coconut Palms (1893), Thomas Moran’s The Gathering Storm Cloud (1893), and Kiki Smith’s Tidal portfolio (1998).
“Engaging the Elements features a beautiful and poignant array of works that inspire us to reflect on the natural world’s enduring potency to compel us, to connect us, and to fill us with a sense of awe,” said Asma Naeem, the BMA’s Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director. “These intrinsic aspects of nature, captured so powerfully in art, also create meaningful opportunities for conversations about our role in preserving and sustaining the environment that gives us so much.”
The exhibition is co-curated by Leslie Cozzi—Curator and Department Head of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs—and Andaleeb Badiee Banta, former Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the BMA.
Support for Engaging the Elements comes from the Henry Luce Foundation. Additional funding for related initiatives is provided by several organizations including the Cohen Opportunity Fund; Nancy Dorman and Stanley Mazaroff; Baltimore Gas and Electric; Johns Hopkins University & Medicine; Eileen Harris Norton Foundation; CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield; and Clayton Baker Trust.
Founded in 1914 the Baltimore Museum of Art holds over 97,000 objects representing many eras and cultures. Its collections include significant holdings such as works by Henri Matisse—the largest public collection worldwide—and extensive selections of prints, drawings, photographs as well as contemporary art by diverse artists. The museum occupies a neoclassical building designed by John Russell Pope with two sculpture gardens. It is located three miles north of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor near Johns Hopkins University main campus. General admission remains free.
