From Bethesda Magazine: Baltimore’s Artscape festival highlights the area’s creativity
Where to stay, what to do and where to go during the Charm City event
By Jennifer Barger
May 21, 2026 11:02 a.m.
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On a typical weekday in downtown Baltimore, you might see a smattering of suited workers passing through War Memorial Plaza, a fountain-filled park bookended by the dome of City Hall and the circa-1925 War Memorial building. The green space is often deserted, save for the occasional lunch-hour picnic or a tourist snapping a selfie with one of the dramatic winged horse sculptures.
But that wasn’t the case over Memorial Day weekend in 2025, when the buttoned-up plaza turned over to a raucous party with hundreds of revelers grooving to live performances by R&B star Fantasia and pop-soul rocker Robin Thicke. My husband, Cal, and I were immersed in the throng, having made the trip north for Artscape, a free annual festival that’s taken place in Charm City since 1982. Last year was the first time this cultural carnival—which draws up to 100,000 visitors in one weekend—took place downtown, spanning roughly six city blocks.
The mood was jubilant, with screenings of locally made films at Baltimore Center Stage and food vendors hawking Maryland delicacies from stands under the Jones Falls Expressway. (Think scoops of Baltimore’s own Taharka Brothers ice cream or coddies, mid-Atlantic fishcakes.)
For the first time since Artscape began, an affordable art fair called Scout saw local photographers, sculptors and painters showing and selling their work inside the polished marble walls of the War Memorial building. “It was like our own mini Art Basel,” says Rowan Bathurst, a muralist and portraitist known for lush florals and goddess-like figures. “It really highlighted the diverse mix of talents we have working in this city.”
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Artscape has long been heralded as an avant-garde mashup of all sorts of art and culture, from African music performances and outdoor ballet recitals to poetry slams and craft stations for kids. This year’s event returns to downtown Baltimore May 23 and 24, with musical performances by hip-hop legends The Roots and R&B artist Stephanie Mills, along with a second Scout art fair and Beyond the Reel, a new program focusing on cinema, TV and digital storytelling.
This annual festival weekend certainly isn’t the only opportunity to see the city’s exuberant and eclectic artistry on display. Baltimore explodes with creativity year-round, thanks to its world-class museums, buzzy performing arts scene and flourishing visual arts community.
“Compared to other East Coast cities, we have a ton of universities, murals everywhere and a cheaper cost of living,” says Brandon Donahue-Shipp, a local artist whose bright works incorporating airbrushing and collage are shown at local galleries, such as Connect + Collect on the edge of the city’s Old Goucher neighborhood. “It just makes it easier for artists to thrive here. There’s an undercurrent of innovation and charm.”
Here’s how to spend a weekend enjoying the arts in Charm City.
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A City of Museums
Artscape is a deep dive into BMore’s rollicking contemporary creative scene, although any weekend offers great museum- and gallery-hopping opportunities. The Baltimore Museum of Art (artbma.org), a sprawling, 210,000-square-foot complex near Johns Hopkins University, fills a 1929 columned building (and several additions) with everything from African masks and the world’s largest collection of works by Henri Matisse to Baltimore album quilts, which consist of various blocks appliqued by different women. Take time to linger at the outside tables next to the on-site Gertrude’s Chesapeake Kitchen (gertrudesbaltimore.com)—the mustardy crabcakes and fried oyster po’boys are delish.
Amid the Gilded Age rowhouses of the Mount Vernon neighborhood just north of downtown, the Walters Art Museum (thewalters.org) shows off 19th-century French paintings, ancient Roman artifacts and contemporary illustrations in an Italian palazzo-inspired building. Through Aug. 9, catch the exhibit, Douriean Fletcher: Jewelry of the Afrofuture, which highlights the acclaimed jewelry designer’s dramatic bronze breastplates, bold headdresses and costume pieces she created for the Black Panther movies.
Near Baltimore Harbor, the American Visionary Art Museum (avam.org) centers on imaginative, offbeat works by self-taught artists. Examples include mosaics rendered in recycled bottle caps and credit cards, portraits composed entirely of seeds, and a 10-foot-tall sculpture of the legendary drag queen and character actor Divine, who starred in several cult-classic films (Pink Flamingos, Hairspray) by Baltimore native John Waters. The gift shop sells affordable art by local creatives, as well as books, art supplies and other items to fuel creativity.
On May 2, the museum hosts the annual Baltimore Kinetic Sculpture Race, which sends an armada of handmade art vehicles and vessels—a bicycle-powered giant poodle, a raft decked with 15-foot-tall cardboard models of Baltimore’s iconic rowhouses—hurtling through the streets and the harbor itself.
Gallery Crawls
To really take in the city’s dynamic art scene, try a Saturday afternoon gallery crawl. Cal and I did just that on a weekend in January, starting at the Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower (bromoseltzertower.com), a 15-story clock tower (and icon of the downtown skyline) built in 1911 as the headquarters for a headache remedy maker. Converted into an art space in 2006, the tower now holds studios for 25 illustrators, painters and jewelry makers between the fourth and 14th floors and is open to the public most Saturdays. We zipped up to the top floor in a tiny elevator, taking skinny stairs between floors to meet artists including Julia Roble, whose multimedia works fuse photography and printmaking, and painter Tommy Roberts, known for saturated, impressionistic landscapes and portraits of musicians.
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A few blocks north of the Bromo tower, Current Space (currentspace.com) is a gallery with a back-garden bar. “If you land in town and you want to see what’s hip, that’s where you go,” says Teri Henderson, a Baltimore culture writer and curator. “It’s got everything from wild puppet shows to films and exhibits.”
Acting on a recommendation from muralist Bathurst, we checked out a few art spaces in the Station North Arts District (stationnorth.org) near Baltimore Penn Station, the city’s 1911 Amtrak train depot. The blocks surrounding the train station boast galleries and studios such as Area 405 (area405.com), a brick-walled, circa-1848 warehouse that hosts changing exhibits meshing video, painting and sculpture. Galerie Myrtis (galeriemyrtis.net) is a space showcasing Black artists, “including some of the biggest names in the Baltimore arts scene,” Bathurst says, such as Monica Ikegwu (known for hyperrealistic portraits) and Jerrell Gibbs, an oil painter capturing scenes of everyday life.
Galleries and performing arts spaces also populate Highlandtown (ihearthighlandtown.com), a rowhouse-rich neighborhood tucked around Patterson Park in southeast Baltimore. Explore the area on foot during the monthly First Friday Art Walk, or on your own any weekend afternoon. Top stops include Highlandtown Gallery (highlandtowngallery.com), known for affordable works by Maryland artists, and Creative Alliance (creativealliance.org), where working studios, gallery displays, classrooms and performing arts spaces are spread across two buildings, including a onetime 1930 movie theater.
Mad About Murals
The most approachable, in-your-face emblems of Baltimore’s aesthetic may well be its ubiquitous outdoor murals, says Donahue-Shipp, who has painted murals in Tennessee and other parts of Maryland, but is “still looking for the right site and commission in Baltimore.”
The Mount Vernon neighborhood is where you’ll find a three-story portrait of Divine, a symbol of LGBTQ+ pride, on the exterior of a rowhouse (106 E. Preston St.). “Corridor of Colors,” a 7,000-square-foot mural by local artist Saba Hamidi, splashes rainbow-hued, abstract forms across the Maryland Avenue Bridge in Station North. And you might spot tagging artists or muralists in action in Graffiti Alley, a paint-covered passageway tucked behind Motor House (motorhousebaltimore.com), a restaurant and performance space housed in a converted early 20th-century car showroom.
Murals are especially prevalent in Station North, Highlandtown and Fells Point, a cobblestoned, waterfront enclave established in 1763. To take them in—and hear about their creators and the events that inspired them—book a walking tour with Liz Miller, a bubbly local fiber artist who founded Mural Art Tours Baltimore (muralarttoursbaltimore.com) in 2017. “I wanted to help popularize murals and let people know how they can transform neighborhoods,” she says. “Baltimore itself changes block by block, and so do its murals.”
Miller especially loves John Ellsberry’s nearly 200-foot-long trio of alligators in the Remington neighborhood and geometric, candy-colored works by her friend Jaz Erenberg. “Jaz has such a beautiful color palette and her work is everywhere—on people’s front doors, on buildings and even wrapping around an auto body shop,” Miller says.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that murals were front and center during Artscape 2025. In the months leading up to the festival, 30 commissioned artists created art wrapping around 43 of the cement pillars under the Jones Falls Expressway downtown, normally the site of a Sunday farmers market. As the weekend’s events unfolded, partiers shopped for crafts and ate street food amid pylons decorated with everything from a Baltimore oriole bird to Bathurst’s sinuous image of a woman dancing in a dreamlike tropical landscape.
“The columns were a great canvas for us to work on. They were spaced out enough to have their own presence, but they also work together as a whole,” Bathurst says. “It was a fun opportunity to get to know the people in your field. It showed how many different types of art we have in Baltimore.”
If You Go
Where to Sleep and Eat Artfully
At Hotel Revival (hotelrevivalbaltimore.com), a 14-story hotel in Mount Vernon, you’ll find curated collages, prints and paintings (some by Baltimore artists) decorating the guest rooms and public spaces. A rooftop bar offers terrific views of the city, and the hotel is just a few blocks from the Walters Art Museum.
Meander Art Bar, a yellow-walled corner bar in Upper Fells Point, offers burgers and beers, along with crafting experiences (jewelry, figure drawing) and displays of local art.
The posh Pendry Baltimore hotel (pendry.com/baltimore), also in Fells Point, shows off a cheeky portrait of Francis Scott Key by local muralist Gaia in its lobby, and a 3,500-pound, 12-foot-tall bronze sculpture of a chubby horse by Colombian legend Fernando Botero in its outdoor courtyard.
Where to Catch a Show
The downtown Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (bsomusic.org) hosts classical concerts by Charm City’s resident Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, as well as visiting artists ranging from sultry jazz singer Diana Krall to songwriter and social activist Ani DiFranco. At the Chesapeake Shakespeare Co. (chesapeakeshakespeare.com), see works by the Bard and other acclaimed playwrights staged in a converted 19th-century bank in downtown Baltimore.
Launched in 1963, the long-running Baltimore Center Stage (centerstage.org) presents edgy new works and visiting shows in a historic Mount Vernon building.
Jennifer Barger is a Washington, D.C.-based travel and design writer. Follow her on Instagram @dcjnell or subscribe to her travel/design Substack newsletter The Souvenirist.
This appears in the May/June 2026 issue of Bethesda Magazine.
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Originally published at Bethesdamagazine