From The Collection

View of the museum from outside showing the Neoclassical building from one corner. The building is a tan-colored stone with an arched doorway, long vertical windows, and detailed molding around the roof.
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Marking Joan Mitchell’s Centenary
Posted: April 2, 2025
Category: From The Collection
In honor of the centenary of the birth of the acclaimed abstract artist, art historian Ellen G. Landau explores her two vibrant paintings in NMWA’s collection.
A vertical, abstraction features broadly painted strokes of pale gray, lavender, and cobalt in the upper two-thirds of the canvas. The colors continue in the lower third, along with touches of green, black, and other hues, but the expressive brushwork becomes denser and chaotic.

Fast Favorites: No Place Like Home
Posted: July 1, 2024
Category: From The Collection
Hear from docent Jayne Beline about her favorite paintings, sculptures, and photographs that all connect to the idea of “home.”
A color photograph of a young light skinned girl with light blonde hair. The girl peeks out from a fort made from a dark blue and purple comforter. A light pink and purple stuffed unicorn sits on a purple and white floral rug in front of the fort. A purple, blue, white, and black paper butterfly-shaped kite hangs on the wall above the fort.

Shop Talk: NMWA Collection Highlights
Posted: November 17, 2023
Category: From The Collection
We spoke with NMWA Director of Publications Elizabeth Lynch about the museum’s brand-new collection highlights catalogue, which draws connections among more than 180 works.

Red: A Taste of the Remixed Collection Galleries
Posted: October 4, 2023
Category: From The Collection
NMWA’s new collection installation features thematic galleries such as “Seeing Red,” which explores artists’ rosy, bold, and fiery uses of the color red.
Painting features vertical tile-shaped brushstrokes in various shades of red separated by horizontal white lines. Creating a rhythmic and mosaic-like pattern that resembles stitching, the white lines create stair steps in the lower right corner, separating as they move towards the center.

Handle with Care: Interview with a Conservator
Posted: September 21, 2023
Category: From The Collection
In preparation for NMWA’s reopening in October, two collection works that will be on view for the first time received conservation treatments.
An oil painting of a mountainous landscape with a river cutting through it is laid on sterile table and prepared for conservation. A compass its in the lower left corner of the painting.

Recent Acquisitions: 2022 Highlights
Posted: January 31, 2023
Category: From The Collection
Get familiar with acquisitions from the museum’s 2022 fiscal year, including a new sculpture by Alison Saar, a still life by Louise Moillon, and a beaded work by Sonya Clark.
Tiny, colorful beads arranged in patterns to depict Esther Mahlangu painting a large artwork of geometric shapes in light pink and blue, black, white, yellow, and green. She is a dark-skinned adult woman wearing colorfully patterned robes.

Legacy Gifts from the Holladay Collection
Posted: September 7, 2022
Category: From The Collection
Discover the newest additions to NMWA’s collection, gifts of late museum founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay.
An opulent, footed silver bowl overflows with ripe cherries in front of a dramatic dark background. Additional fruits lie on the table below the bowl, and a butterfly flutters to one side.

About Town: NMWA at the Baltimore Museum of Art
Posted: August 17, 2022
Category: From The Collection
During the museum's renovation, art from NMWA’s collection is on view at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Learn about works by Clara Peeters, Berthe Morisot, and more.
Two women are surrounded by baskets of grapes and other produce. They are both light-skinned and wearing old-fashioned attire with head wraps and full skirts, stand on either side of a table, as the younger one places a bin of grapes into a large basket on the other’s back.

NMWA at the National Gallery: Modern Visions
Posted: April 27, 2022
Category: From The Collection
Just a mile from their home at NMWA, 11 collection works are on display at the National Gallery. Learn about works by Frida Kahlo, Eva Hesse, and Amy Sherald as...
Wearing a bright yellow apron-style dress with strawberries and lace-trim details, an expressionless young woman with medium-dark skin tone rendered in grayscale stares out with her hands in her dress pockets. Her head is cocked to one side against an intensely pink-colored background.

NMWA at the National Gallery: Historical Heroines
Posted: April 20, 2022
Category: From The Collection
Just a mile from their home at NMWA, 11 collection works are on display at the National Gallery. Learn about works by Sarah Miriam Peale and Cecilia Beaux as presented...
Realistic half-portrait of a light-skinned woman, set against a dark background, with her face brightly illuminated as she gazes directly at the viewer. She is clad in dark Victorian dress with her hair pinned up under a hat adorned with a red velvet bow.