This spring, Derrick Adams, Jerrell Gibbs, Joyce J. Scott, and other contemporary Baltimore artists shaping the national and global arts landscape will be featured in Strong, Bright, Useful & True: Recent Acquisitions and Contemporary Art from Baltimore at the Irene and Richard Frary Gallery at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C. Strong, Bright, Useful & True features a selection of new acquisitions made through the Johns Hopkins University Art Collecting Committee, which includes faculty, staff and students, in collaboration with BmoreArt Connect + Collect. These new acquisitions will be shown alongside works from the campus collection at Hopkins. On view April 15 through September 6, 2025, the exhibition illustrates the vibrancy of Baltimore’s contemporary art scene and the University’s longstanding commitment to elevating creative culture in and around the region, including through its acquisition efforts.
Showcasing a broad spectrum of media—including painting, sculpture, time-based media, and photography—Strong, Bright, Useful & True includes works by globally recognized and emergent artists such as Adams, Gibbs, and Scott, as well as Nakeya Brown, Se Jong Cho, Brandon Donahue-Shipp, Oletha DeVane, Erin Fostel, Phaan Howng, Kei Ito, Linling Lu, Edgar Reyes, Soledad Salamé, Bria Sterling-Wilson, and René Treviño. The exhibition’s title is inspired by the inaugural address of the first Johns Hopkins University president Daniel Gilman, who in 1876 proclaimed Hopkins’ simple aim “… to make scholars strong, bright, useful, and true.”
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