Things to do / Travel Guide
Address:100 Key Hwy.
Baltimore, Maryland
Tel:
(410) 244-1900
Reconnect with your innate artistic intelligence and intuition through visionary arts!
Called an "architectural jewel," the 35,000-square-foot main building of the American Visionary Art Museum combines an elliptical, three-story, historic industrial building with new and exciting architecture, including a hand cast central stairway, balustrade and garden gates. The museum boasts a permanent collection of 5,000 pieces which all fall under the themes of the museum's mission of expanding the definition of a worthwhile life, promoting the use of innate intelligence, intuition, self-exploration and creative self-reliance, and confirming the great hunger for finding out just what each of us can do best. The museum's seven galleries are filled with paintings, sculptures, relief works, and pieces by untrained "visionary" artists working "outside the box."
The museum's unusual philosophy extends outside its walls, with large exhibits installed in a former whiskey warehouse and a 55-foot whirligig twirling in the museum's plaza, which kids will love. And on the first Thursday of the month from June through August, the museum offers a free movie screened on the side of the museum's building. Visitors can enjoy re-fueling before receiving further artistic inspiration at The Joy America Café.
To get to the American Visionary Art Museum from New York / Philadelphia and Points North: Follow 1-95 south through the Ft. McHenry tunnel (stay in right hand lane through the tunnel) to exit 55/Key Highway at the bottom of the ramp, make a right at the stop light onto Key Highway. The museum is 1.5 miles ahead on the corner of Key Highway and Covington St.
From American Visionary Art Museum - Baltimore, Maryland:
The American Visionary Art Museum seeks to build upon the ancient Native American Vision Quest, and other similar self-revelatory journeys undertaken by visionaries in different times, cultures, and places. We seek to draw attention to America's history as a mecca for forward-looking innovators, optimists, dreamers and doers -highlighting the sense that America is at her best when she actively remembers that many of her greatest citizens were very much self-taught, self-made pioneers.