Bearman Gallery

About

Located on the third floor of the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Museum, Bearman Gallery features a rotating exhibition of local African American art that is reflective of the historical significance and sanctity of the location, and celebrates unsung and emerging artists as well as mid-career and seasoned voices. The work covers a broad range of styles and mediums and uplifts history while creating a current connection to life and art in the African American communities of Baltimore.

To view past collections, click here!

Kibibi Ajanku, Curator-in-Residence

Kibibi Ajanku is an independent curator based in Baltimore, Maryland. Ajanku has traveled the African Diaspora to study, teach, perform, and exhibit with many masters, and is the Founding Mother of the Baltimore-based Sankofa Dance Theater, a group that continues to share joyous spirit by bringing movement and rhythm together in layered, interlocking rhythmic patterns.

Ajanku believes that when presented properly, art is the perfect vehicle to inspire authentic dialogue in an effort to move forward into greater intercultural awareness for the global community. As a result, her curatorial projects encompass an ever-growing body of exploratory research, image-making, exhibition-making. She often uses the exhibition space to emphasize relationships between historical occurrences and lived history.

Ajanku attended Morgan State University and received her MFA in Curatorial Practice from Maryland Institute College of Art. She is Bearman Gallery Curator-In-Residence for the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Museum. Some of her recent exhibitions include Indigo Magic (2016); Locations (2017); Frederick Douglass (2018); NonToxic Masculinity (2018); WeChoose! (2019); Espi Frazier (2019).

Additionally, Kibibi Ajanku curates and guides the elements of the Urban Arts Leadership Fellowship for the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance where she serves as Equity and Inclusion Director. Under her leadership, the Fellowship has increased racial inclusion within arts sector leadership and has positively altered workplace best practices through actively training, placing, and referring, an annual cohort of emerging professionals. Additionally, she holds space as the Resident Curator for a small gallery in the Fells Point area of Baltimore, Maryland. Ajanku is also the Urban Arts Professor for a small cohort of students at Coppin State University and additionally serves as a Resident Artist/Educator for Maryland Institute College of Art Fibers Department. Furthermore, Ajanku is excited to administer the evolution of a new Urban Arts Field School project with UAL fellows and community folklorists, recently funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

SUSIE'S STEEL & SPIRIT

A Tribute to Susan T. King

She was called Susie as a child — a girl from Kilmarnock, Virginia, born July 13, 1924, who would grow into one of Baltimore's most extraordinary women.

After graduating from Frederick Douglass High School in 1942, young Susie stepped into a nation at war. She trained as an aircraft riveter and was hired by Eastern Aircraft in Baltimore County — one of the few African Americans, and fewer still as an actual riveter — helping to assemble the planes that flew in World War II. She stands among the women history now celebrates as Rosie the Riveters.

Driven to uplift herself and her family, Mrs. King attended Hampton University and earned degrees from Morgan State University and Coppin State University, entrenching a proud family HBCU tradition. She devoted her career to the Baltimore City Public Schools as a science teacher and guidance counselor — carrying the same determination from the factory floor into every classroom.

A Congressional Gold Medal recipient, a woman of deep faith and community, and now a centenarian whose legacy endures through scholarships in her name — Mrs. Susan T. King is, in every sense, a living legend.

This exhibition is a living tribute to a living woman. We celebrate her at 102.