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.

Our incoming installation is Indigo Magic. The installation is by Kibibi Ajanku, an African American artist who engages indigo as more than pigment. In her hands, indigo becomes a spiritual and ancestral force. From quilting to collage, in two dimensions and three, these works speak in the language of inheritance and innovation. What began as an exploration has become a journey, one that invites you to see indigo not just as a color, but as a bridge between continents, centuries, and souls. Here, indigo is used as a lens to trace the profound artistic and cultural connections between Africa and the Americas. This exhibition celebrates the aesthetics of African American art forms that carry the DNA of West African traditions… a living lineage of legacy, identity, and craft that pulses through every stitch, every brushstroke, every fold.

Why indigo? Because its story is our story… vast, global, and utterly human. Named for its connection to India, indigo has woven itself into the fabric of civilizations across time: Egyptian mummies wrapped in indigo-dyed cloth. Brilliant turquoise Mayan frescoes born from regional indigo strains. Sixteenth-century Franco-Flemish unicorn tapestries threaded with indigo's deep blues. Ancient Britons painting themselves with woad before battle. And today… still today… indigo lives in the daily garments of women in southwest China and in the traditional kimonos of Orihime, Japan.

But this exhibition returns indigo to one of its most powerful stories: the African diaspora and the hands that cultivated, created, and transformed this plant into art, resistance, and memory.  As Kibibi Ajanku shares: "My creative practice and deep interest in indigo are rooted in a commitment to researching, preserving, and honoring the often-overlooked artistic connections to West Africa. Indigo Magic is both personal and collective… I see myself, history, and legacy reflected in this work. Through this exhibition, I strive to celebrate the past while creating a platform for innovation and the future, using time-honored materials in new, meaningful, and respectful ways."

Indigo Magic will be open for public viewing starting April 11, 2026. Stop by the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park to experience this journey for yourself!

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.