BMA to Open Major Solo Exhibition of Baltimore-based Artist Jerrell Gibbs in September

BALTIMORE, MD (June 23, 2026)—This fall, the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) invites visitors to experience a solo exhibition of new works by celebrated Baltimore-based artist Jerrell Gibbs. Featuring approximately 30 paintings, Jerrell Gibbs: Come home with me draws on the artist’s life and memories to explore the universality of human experience. The exhibition evokes the home of the artist’s Aunt Ella as a vital site of gathering—revealing how moments of childhood joy, connections to family and friends, and a sense of home transcend the barriers between people. In a moment of deep national division, Come home with me is a powerful and poignant invitation to uplift and engage with what unites us. The exhibition will be on view from September 16, 2026, through May 2, 2027.

Gibbs’s expressive, gestural paintings embrace the language of figuration and abstraction. The artist often draws inspiration from family photos to create works that reflect both elements of the original image and the emotive qualities of the moment it holds. Through painterly interpretation, Gibbs amplifies and hybridizes aspects of his source material to evoke particular feelings and draw the viewer into the complex nature of memory, as it is reshaped by time and experience. For Come home with me, Gibbs also expands his frame of reference to major European and American paintings by such artists as Jean Siméon Chardin, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Henri Matisse, and Grant Wood. Reimagining elements of these works through his own lens, Gibbs captures the continuity that exists among artists and communities across time, place, and culture, and creates new entry points into his practice.

This exhibition is organized by the rooms of Aunt Ella’s home, welcoming visitors to journey through the spaces that shaped the artist’s life and artistic vision and creating universal touchpoints. Among the spaces explored in the exhibition are:

• The Porch: Gibbs has noted that the porch “serves as the home’s primary threshold—the first point of entry where guests are received and welcomed into the warmth, comfort, and care that define the space within.” Among the paintings in this section areAuntie’s Mother (2026), which frames an elderly woman against the familiar exteriors of Baltimore’s rowhomes, her rocking chair seemingly moving with the rhythms of time, and American Colonial(2026), which reimagines Grant Wood’s painting American Gothicthrough the lens of Black domestic life.
• The Living Room: In Aunt Ella’s house, the living room served as the nexus of family gatherings and neighborhood life, where stories were exchanged, celebrations held, and afternoons stretched long. The section is anchored by a monumental painting of the artist’s immediate family, titled Portrait of a family(2026), which extends the tradition of family portraiture to painterly expression. Writing about the importance of such images, Gibbs notes that family portraits “reinforce a sense of identity and belonging, transforming the home into a space where history, pride, and legacy are continuously on display.”
• The Backyard: The backyard holds the energy of play, where the sounds of conversations and music carry across neighborhoods. On summer nights, especially, time feels suspended as people find themselves in embrace of warm weather and the fun of being outdoors with friends and family. In the painting Chardin(2026), a child plays with bubbles, absorbed by the soapy movement and refracted light. It is a scene experienced daily across communities and captures the innocence and imagination of childhood.

The exhibition also explores the communal happenings of the kitchen and basement. In addition to the paintings—all created especially for this presentation—the basement section includes family photographs that add texture to the stories and experiences the exhibition surfaces.

“The BMA has long championed Jerrell’s distinct vision and work. We are delighted to now present this major solo exhibition in his hometown and revel in his ongoing celebration of Black families and daily life,” said Asma Naeem, the BMA’s Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director. “Come home with meis both an intimate view into the artist’s world and an ode to the enduring influence of home and community on our lives. I am certain that our many audiences will find reflections of themselves in this joyful presentation.”

Jerrell Gibbs: Come home with me is curated by Antoinette Roberts, BMA Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art.

This exhibition is supported by the Nancy Dorman and Stanley Mazaroff Fund of the Baltimore Community Foundation and Amy and Marc Meadows.

Jerrell Gibbs (b. 1988 Baltimore, Maryland) explores the complexities of life by investigating his personal experiences of living and growing up in America. His paintings are composites of childhood memories centered around American life and culture, spotlighting stories of the familiar that go unnoticed. Gibbs uses everyday settings as the framework to his paintings to highlight the innumerable similarities humanity shares despite social differences. Gibbs’s work has been featured in a wide range of solo and group exhibitions at the Brandywine Museum of Art, Flag Art Foundation, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among numerous others. His work is in the collections of the Brandywine Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, Columbus Museum of Art, the Los Angeles Museum of Art, and the Cc Foundation and X Museum in Beijing, China. Gibbs graduated with an M.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD in 2020.