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.
Current Exhibit
The Poncho Retrospective
In 1980, at seventeen, Larry Poncho Brown opened a sign-painting business in Baltimore. Forty-five years later, he has never stopped working as a full-time artist. The Poncho Retrospective brings together sixteen works, each selected to mark a chapter in a career that has shaped how a community sees itself.
From early airbrush and sign-painting roots, through the landmark Black is Black series of the mid-1980s, to the distilled power of the recent Speak Words to Power series, the exhibition traces an artist's lifelong commitment to depicting African American life with dignity, warmth, and beauty. Brown's aim, in his words, is to capture "SOUL," and the work delivers it through family, music, spirituality, and unity.
Presented in the intimate setting of Bearman Gallery, the exhibition lets viewers take in the whole arc at once. Curator Kibibi Ajanku invites visitors to look closely, listen to the rhythm in the work, and find their place in it.
Exhibition: October-November 2026
Artist Reception: Sunday, October 11, 2026 | 3:00-6:00 p.m.
Location: Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Museum, Bearman Gallery 1417 Thames Street, Fells Point, Baltimore, MD 21231
Gallery Hours: Monday-Friday | 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Contact: Kibibi Ajanku | kibibi.ajanku@gmail.com
Locate Us
1417 Thames Street
Baltimore, MD 21231