Art Appreciation
Friends were staying in Baltimore for the weekend and we decided to meet for a look around The Walters Museum in the Mount Vernon Cultural District. The Walters has an exceptional collection of art objects: Paleolithic axe heads, mummies of women and cats, and child-sized suits of armor.
Roman sculpture in a sun-filled, marble-floored courtyard, Impressionist and Renaissance paintings, vases from Ancient Greece, Faberge eggs, Tiffany vases, ossuaries, and sarcophagi.
Some rooms are so crowded with ornately framed artworks, that there’s a Victorian salon feel to the place. It freed me from the need to approach each individual piece with academic intent, absorbing and retaining information from the accompanying information plaque. Instead, I stood happily immersed in the visual cacophony.
The building (actually three conjoined and each with its own architectural style) is a delight to walk through. The center, original, museum has a room you can’t miss. The name alone will make you want to grab your keys and drive north: The Chamber of Wonders.
My friend Gail describes visiting the Walters to be like rambling around in a curio cabinet and the Chamber of Wonders is the distillation of that feeling. Inside are the wonders of Nature on display in shadow boxes and glass-fronted bureaus and hung on every inch of wall space.
Cheetah skins and giant mounted butterflies; the head of a moose; shelves of seashells; enormous beetles pinned in a case; the full body of an alligator above the doorway that reads, “Through Such Variety is Nature Beautiful.”
The Egyptian Room has an entirely different feel. The space is hushed, the lighting muted, the artifacts in spare groupings.
It’s a room to whisper in. You’d have (barely) heard me say, “Look, a cat mummy,” before I tiptoed over to a set of mounted carved tablets etched and painted in 2000 BC (and still looking good!)
And when you think you can’t possibly be any more amazed, walk past the statue of George Washington atop the obelisk just outside the Charles Street exit and cross the street to The Peabody Institute.
You can walk right in to the famous library there. “The Peabody Stack Room,” according to the Institute's website, “contains five tiers of ornamental cast-iron balconies, which rise dramatically to the skylight 61 feet above the floor.” It could be an adjunct to the Chamber of Wonders: a work of art in its own right.
