BMA Opens Engaging the Elements: Poetry in Nature in September

The exhibition features nearly 20 artworks that explore humanity’s evolving relationship with nature through depictions of the elements

BALTIMORE, MD (August 6, 2025)—On September 17, the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) will open Engaging the Elements: Poetry in Nature,a focus exhibition that highlights the powerful role nature plays in our lives and imaginations. Nearly 20 photographs, prints, drawings, and textiles from the BMA’s collection illustrate how artists have captured the beauty and force of the natural world through images of air, water, earth, and fire. Engaging the Elements: Poetry in Nature explores the ways art connects us to nature and can spark meaningful conversations about preservation and ecological awareness. The exhibition will be on view through February 8, 2026.

Depictions of the elements have long served as a way to communicate humanity’s appreciation for both the beauty of and threat within nature. Against this overarching backdrop, Engaging the Elements demonstrates how attitudes toward the environment have shifted and continue to evolve through time, from the rise of widespread industrialization in the 19th century to the current climate challenges. Through works like William Morris’ handmade floral textile Rose (1883); Larry Schwarm’s dramatic Wheat Stubble Fire, Eastern Colorado (1992, printed 2004); Yao Lu’s deceptive View of Waterfall with Rocks and Pines (2007); and Jowita Wyszomirska’s dazzling Nothing Gold Can Stay 2 (2023), nature is presented as a creative catalyst worth celebrating and protecting.

Other highlights include rarely shown works on paper such as Winslow Homer’s Coconut Palms(1893), Thomas Moran’s The Gathering Storm Cloud (1893), and Kiki Smith’s Tidal (1998) portfolio of photogravures and photolithographs. In these artworks and others, the elements both mirror our relationship with the Earth and become meaningful communicators for shaping a more sustainable future.

“Engaging the Elements features a beautiful and poignant array of works that inspire us to reflect on the natural world’s enduring potency to compel us, to connect us, and to fill us with a sense of awe,” said Asma Naeem, the BMA’s Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director. “These intrinsic aspects of nature, captured so powerfully in art, also create meaningful opportunities for conversations about our role in preserving and sustaining the environment that gives us so much.”

The exhibition is co-curated by Leslie Cozzi, BMA Curator and Department Head of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, and Andaleeb Badiee Banta, former BMA Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.

Turn Again to the Earth

Turn Again to the Earth is a series of major initiatives that model commitments to environmental sustainability and foster discourse on climate change and the role of the museum during the BMA’s 110th anniversary. Unfolding throughout 2025, the interrelated efforts include a series of 10 exhibitions as well as public programs that capture the relationships between art and the environment across time and geography; the creation of a sustainability plan for the museum; and a citywide eco-challenge that invites Baltimore and regional partners to engage in environment-related conversations and enact their own plans for a more sustainable future. The title for this initiative is inspired by the writing of environmental activist Rachel Carson, who spent most of her life and career in Maryland.

This initiative is generously supported by the Cohen Opportunity Fund, the Henry Luce Foundation, Nancy Dorman and Stanley Mazaroff, Baltimore Gas and Electric, Johns Hopkins University & Medicine, the Eileen Harris Norton Foundation, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, and the Clayton Baker Trust.