I love the BMA. It's a free museum with a great restaurant, cool exhibits, a nice park across the street. Nearby is The Book Thing, a free book store. Also another (non-free) book & record store, Normal's. And another, Urban Reads. And another bookstore/coffee shop, Bird in Hand. And a farmer's market. And a vegan restaurant. And the quirkiest diner ever, Papermoon. And a small rock venue. And a worker-owned co-op coffeeshop that President Obama visited. All in a four block radius.
there is this tee - Baltimore, Actually I Like It - you need it fam. Been here for 31 years, working in IT now, raising a family and all that. Balto is cool.
I've seen this t-shirt around. As a Baltimore native, it sort of irritates me even though it's tongue in cheek! It assumes that Baltimore is a bad/unlikable place that people need to learn to love (or need to convince others that it's worth living in).
In fact, I think there's a lot to like about the city right off the bat and that many people are drawn to it without feeling like they're being forced to live there.
I don't know, maybe we can start with the positive image of the city rather than having a base assumption that it's some kind of hellscape. Doesn't mean we should ignore the negatives, just that the negatives don't need to precede the rest. I don't hear NYC residents say "New York...it isn't all rats and homeless people!"
Johns Hopkins APL is not far south on 95 from Baltimore. It does MIC stuff, but is also involved with various space programs. There are a bunch of small and large tech companies in and around Baltimore and Baltimore county. I've worked in Columbia, Linthicum, and Rockville MD. (Rockville commute was insane before the new highway, now it would doable for folks who don't mind driving a lot).
I lived there for 12 years. Generally speaking, Baltimore is good if you want relatively affordable housing. A number of neighborhoods are great for DINKS (dual-income, no kids). Public schooling is a hard no-go unless you really get involved and enroll your kids in a carefully selected charter or magnet school. There are some excellent private schools. Baltimore county has options too if you want something that's more suburban.
As far a crime goes, the city has some really profound problems that are the result of white flight and systematic disinvestment. It was hit hard by the crack epidemic and has not really recovered. The TV shows "The Wire" and especially "The Corner" capture the flavor of the rough parts of Baltimore more than residents would like to admit. As far as safety is concerned, like other big cities, it's not really a problem for folks that would read HN, unless you enjoy hanging out in bars at 2am and getting into arguments with armed drug-trade people. Don't leave anything in your car, get a security system for your house.
A few off the top of my head. I'm currently working (remotely) for a BigCo that acquired my startup employer last year.
Technical.ly can be a good resource for local postings. I've worked as a SWE in Baltimore for 10 years and have never had employment issues. I don't quite make SV money, but I make solid 6 figures and can afford a very nice home on just my salary and send my kids to private school, etc.
There are quite a large number of well regarded universities and hospitals. In addition, Under Armour and a few other Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in Baltimore.
Baltimore is a cool town. People have a perception of it based on national media, and don’t get me wrong, it has it’s share of issues, but every city does. It is one of the quirkiest, weirdest cities in the US. It is not quite a northern city and not quite southern either.
Columbia is 22 miles south of Baltimore, home to an entity sometimes known as The Fort. 40 miles south is DC if you want to work GovTech. TRowePrice has/had a datacenter in Owings Mills, 20-some miles northwest of Baltimore. CapitalOne has offices in Baltimore but HQ in Virginia. Constellation Energy (not sure what they're known as now) used to have a datacenter south of Baltimore as well. It's not SV or Boston or NYC, to be sure.
Our startup (Cortx) does natural language generation work, is located in Fells Point, and is currently hiring Machine Learning Engineers and Full Stack Engineers :)
I am living in Baltimore and work out of DC as an ML engineer. The commute sucks, but with because of covid, I have been WFH. DC has a lot of tech companies, but lots of connections to defense.
I used to head out there annually for... convention stuff, but I quite liked the city when I was passing through. Conditions there seem to be improving rapidly, too!
Also notable is the Broad Museum in Los Angeles. Their guards are also docents, so you are encouraged to talk to them about the art and ask them questions. After experiencing this more human interaction, it was a bit of a shock for me to go down the street to the Museum of Contemporary Art, where I asked a guard a question and they flat out rejected my asking, haha!
Arts workers need to be paid well and also have enriching roles in the museums. And I don't think this sort of thing necessarily requires a 4-year degree or whatnot. I believe people are naturally curious, and we need to lean into that.
Docents are usually volunteers, so it's not like there are general budgeting concerns. There's also usually bodies to fill these positions since it's almost like a title/labor of love for someone who doesn't need the money or a resume builder for someone who does in the art world, where good paying jobs are hard to come by.
It must put a lot of pressure on a security guard to do double duty like that. What if someone defaces a Warhol while they're talking to someone else about it? I'm sure The Broad probably has redundant controls in place, but in general, you shouldn't really expect to be able to bother or distract security guards.
It's not about leaning into a person's natural curiosity; most museums take care of all the staff with regards to entrance & tours if requested. It's about liability, insurance, etc.
They don't produce anything of value, they provide a service that basically anyone can do. They're free to take the job or not take it. Who doesn't need to paid well in your utopia?
This is peculiar because it treats security guards as humans and challenges unspoken hierarchy. It also implies the museum doesn't save on security (17 guards is a lot) and there isn't a big turnover (unless there's a special type of security guard that mostly works in museums). It's borderline unthinkable in the 5th roundest country in the world where I live. They would hire students.
I was hoping it would be more about burglaries, stealing famous works of arts, selling stolen works etc. The law enforcement / security perspective. Instead it appears to be a pretty standard exhibition except with an unusual method of selecting curators.
My dad used to be a security guard at the Cleveland Museum of Art. What's funny is that often guests would ask him and the other guards about specific pieces or artists as if he was a subject matter expert (although he has always been an art enthusiast, he doesn't have a professional art background). Eventually, he started doing his own background reading, because he really enjoyed these conversations.
After years of viewing exhibits (both permanent and temporary), many on the non-curator staff do end up with a substantially deep view of the art that they protect. This exhibit should be really fascinating.
> This is peculiar because it treats security guards as humans and challenges unspoken hierarchy.
I still find it a bit condescending / annoying. I read things like "offering a particularly human-centered lens through which to consider the objects" as let the plebs have their night out once in a while. They'll still get "mentored" by curators apparently, so it's not like they're just using their understanding to pick, they'll probably get brainwashed a bit.
One interesting experiment would be to put a button / ticket scanner near each artwork and ask the visitors to vote on what they liked. Maybe give them a theme and ask them to pick 2-3 pieces of art that matched that theme and put an exhibition on at the end of a month or so with the most picked works.
I don't completely disagree with what you're saying regarding the text, but as a person who loves the arts but doesn't work in it, I would appreciate speaking to a bona fide curator if I was asked to partake in an exhibition.
Sure, there is a chance of your so-called brainwashing (influence, in more generous terms), but an exhibition benefits from coherence and thought-out message.
I think their selection makes sense. The day-to-day experience of a guard at a museum is to tell people to stand a bit farther away and not take photos (in some galleries). What would be more interesting is if they channeled their long presence among artworks, and their ability to observe crowds and their transience.
Indeed, in the US, there are museum guards who only work in museums. Sometimes, they are called docents. As with most things in the states, however, there is a lot of regional variation.
What's especially interesting here is that an organisation is treating its employees like human beings, as you said. It would be weird for any museum here to say, "I think people would like to know what our employees appreciate in art." Not weird in that it's unthinkable; weird in that it just never happens that way in the States.
This is really fun IMO. The article makes a point that the security guards probably know the art pieces better than most people since they are constantly patrolling and looking around. Plus it gives them a chance to have some fun curating the collection.
What interests me is it's not just the pieces they know well: it's the audiences. I am a huge fan of analytics and user testing because it helps me understand the experiences of the people I'm building for. I would love to hear how the guards think about art in terms of the zillion people they've seen react to it.
yea definitely, it will be super interesting to here the "why" behind their selections. Is it because they know its a big crowd pleaser, or do they like the piece for personal reasons. That will be fun to know.
I could walk around Guernica or la Joconde all day for years and I wouldn't grasp their significance and values without external insights. Only their aesthetics and at a non historic level.
Maybe, but I would be open to seeing what insights they come up on their own. I think that's the great thing about art - there's no right way to interpret it, and I wouldn't assume that guards are only capable of appraising on aesthetic level. The article also cited it would be done in collaboration with other folks from the museum, so I think it's going to be well done / may surprise you.
If anybody ever visits Washington D.C., it's very easy to get overwhelmed with the world class Smithsonian and National Gallery museums (amongst the dozens of others). But I highly recommend taking the time to go to Baltimore and visiting this museum as well as the nearby Walters Art Museum, both also very very good museums.
Other great places for awesome museums within a day-drive of D.C.:
Richmond, VA - Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Dulles, VA - Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum
Various National Battlefields sprinkled all over the area
A bit further out, but possible in a day and easily world class, the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Came here to say the same thing. It's a brilliantly wonderful place.
Also in DC, don't forget the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. It's one of my favorite modern art museums in the world, and I live 20 minutes from it. I don't go anywhere near often enough.
And while one is in that general area, don't miss a visit to Glenstone [1], a superb combination of art, architecture, and modern museum in the Potomac area, just west of D.C.
While the art collection is fantastic (hosted in an older set of gallery buildings by Charles Gwathmey, and a newer building by Thomas Phifer and Partners), the huge park it's located in makes it a particularly unique experience, featuring permanent outdoor pieces by the likes of Andy Goldsworthy, Richard Serra, and Michael Heizer.
I've been to many of the art and science museums in D.C. and Baltimore, but Glenstone is my favourite.
After 10+ years in the area, I just discovered a few weeks ago that this place exists while looking at a map to plan a bike ride. I couldn't believe that some of what's there is from the same world class artists that I saw at the Guggenheim in Spain (Jeff Koons, Richard Serra). I thought for sure Google Maps was playing a trick on me since no friends have ever mentioned it and I certainly haven't been. It's now on my shortlist of places to check out when the weather cools off a bit.
Note that those Smithsonian museums are all free. It was weird growing up here -- in most other places, you're expected to pay for museums.
The Walters and Baltimore Art Museum are also free.
Note that Udvar-Hazy is in the slightly odd position that it's technically free but parking is $15. It's very far from downtown, and driving is pretty much the best way there. But the exhibits are beyond cool -- a Space Shuttle, a Concorde, a Blackbird, and a ton of other very cool aircraft.
As a fellow person who grew up in DC, it definitely spoils you - I feel surprised every time I have to pay for a museum, especially because the prices are often so high !
Since this is HN, I can wholeheartedly recommend the National Cryptologic Museum (between DC and Baltimore, pay really good attention to the signs so you don't make a wrong turn and having an awkward interaction with NSA Police). In addition to math stuff, there's a lot of exhibits on the history of computing that is kept pretty well up to date (when I went ~5 years ago they already had a display talking about Heartbleed).
My vacations in the before times were to go to Europe to copy paintings. I sometimes spend a week at an institution just copying paintings, so I get to know the guards. So many of them are spectacular artists in their own right.
In my utopian vision of the world, museum guards are given rolling pedestals and pencils and told to roam the galleries copying. They can pay attention to what's going on around them and draw.
The result is that we have people there to answer questions and make sure nothing bad happens, but also is someone who's just getting better and better at drawing and painting. Then that person can become a great artist in their own right.
Our society's reward is an enormous amount of people who can paint really well. Murals everywhere. Good paintings everywhere.
I love your utopian vision, seconded. In fact, something like this would boost the economy ever so slightly, creating a new source of skilled productivity. Guards with new skills would gain the option of becoming illustrators, likely slightly but perhaps noticeably increasing the supply of illustrators available to lend their services to new projects.
This is an excellent idea. The guards are doubtlessly more in touch with the culture of the common people of Baltimore than the professional curators could hope to be.
Interestingly, I see the value in what you are proposing, but also the value in the different points of view and challenging artworks that the curators present. A gallery and museum can conform to local tastes, and also challenge them for the better. Maintaining a balance between those two ambitions is how you end up with museums and galleries that are woven into a local area and art scene, honouring local history and culture while fostering the vital energy required for dynamic and creative art.
At the very least, they will have perspectives and sensibilities which are possibly representative of a different group of people that can be enlightening and can broaden the interests of regular museum goers.
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I love the BMA. It's a free museum with a great restaurant, cool exhibits, a nice park across the street. Nearby is The Book Thing, a free book store. Also another (non-free) book & record store, Normal's. And another, Urban Reads. And another bookstore/coffee shop, Bird in Hand. And a farmer's market. And a vegan restaurant. And the quirkiest diner ever, Papermoon. And a small rock venue. And a worker-owned co-op coffeeshop that President Obama visited. All in a four block radius.
Dang, I miss Baltimore.
https://atomicbooks.com/products/baltimore-actually-shirt
In fact, I think there's a lot to like about the city right off the bat and that many people are drawn to it without feeling like they're being forced to live there.
I don't know, maybe we can start with the positive image of the city rather than having a base assumption that it's some kind of hellscape. Doesn't mean we should ignore the negatives, just that the negatives don't need to precede the rest. I don't hear NYC residents say "New York...it isn't all rats and homeless people!"
What is there to do for tech work in Baltimore? All jobs I've seen are in the MIC, which I dislike.
I lived there for 12 years. Generally speaking, Baltimore is good if you want relatively affordable housing. A number of neighborhoods are great for DINKS (dual-income, no kids). Public schooling is a hard no-go unless you really get involved and enroll your kids in a carefully selected charter or magnet school. There are some excellent private schools. Baltimore county has options too if you want something that's more suburban.
As far a crime goes, the city has some really profound problems that are the result of white flight and systematic disinvestment. It was hit hard by the crack epidemic and has not really recovered. The TV shows "The Wire" and especially "The Corner" capture the flavor of the rough parts of Baltimore more than residents would like to admit. As far as safety is concerned, like other big cities, it's not really a problem for folks that would read HN, unless you enjoy hanging out in bars at 2am and getting into arguments with armed drug-trade people. Don't leave anything in your car, get a security system for your house.
https://www.sparkpost.com/https://www.cloudtamer.io/https://www.contrastsecurity.com/
A few off the top of my head. I'm currently working (remotely) for a BigCo that acquired my startup employer last year.
Technical.ly can be a good resource for local postings. I've worked as a SWE in Baltimore for 10 years and have never had employment issues. I don't quite make SV money, but I make solid 6 figures and can afford a very nice home on just my salary and send my kids to private school, etc.
Baltimore is a cool town. People have a perception of it based on national media, and don’t get me wrong, it has it’s share of issues, but every city does. It is one of the quirkiest, weirdest cities in the US. It is not quite a northern city and not quite southern either.
Google has given me many music venues…
Thanks
— left coaster
Luckily though greenmount is starting to clean up. Red Emma's is moving into the neighborhood soon as well
They're just exploiting the hard work of the coffee bushes. (And their customers since the product is addictive.)
Arts workers need to be paid well and also have enriching roles in the museums. And I don't think this sort of thing necessarily requires a 4-year degree or whatnot. I believe people are naturally curious, and we need to lean into that.
It must put a lot of pressure on a security guard to do double duty like that. What if someone defaces a Warhol while they're talking to someone else about it? I'm sure The Broad probably has redundant controls in place, but in general, you shouldn't really expect to be able to bother or distract security guards.
It's not about leaning into a person's natural curiosity; most museums take care of all the staff with regards to entrance & tours if requested. It's about liability, insurance, etc.
I was hoping it would be more about burglaries, stealing famous works of arts, selling stolen works etc. The law enforcement / security perspective. Instead it appears to be a pretty standard exhibition except with an unusual method of selecting curators.
After years of viewing exhibits (both permanent and temporary), many on the non-curator staff do end up with a substantially deep view of the art that they protect. This exhibit should be really fascinating.
I still find it a bit condescending / annoying. I read things like "offering a particularly human-centered lens through which to consider the objects" as let the plebs have their night out once in a while. They'll still get "mentored" by curators apparently, so it's not like they're just using their understanding to pick, they'll probably get brainwashed a bit.
One interesting experiment would be to put a button / ticket scanner near each artwork and ask the visitors to vote on what they liked. Maybe give them a theme and ask them to pick 2-3 pieces of art that matched that theme and put an exhibition on at the end of a month or so with the most picked works.
Sure, there is a chance of your so-called brainwashing (influence, in more generous terms), but an exhibition benefits from coherence and thought-out message.
Indeed, in the US, there are museum guards who only work in museums. Sometimes, they are called docents. As with most things in the states, however, there is a lot of regional variation.
What's especially interesting here is that an organisation is treating its employees like human beings, as you said. It would be weird for any museum here to say, "I think people would like to know what our employees appreciate in art." Not weird in that it's unthinkable; weird in that it just never happens that way in the States.
and that's just the ones that wanted to partake
It's not much more than 1 watching cameras and 3 rovers.
Other great places for awesome museums within a day-drive of D.C.:
Richmond, VA - Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Dulles, VA - Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum
Various National Battlefields sprinkled all over the area
A bit further out, but possible in a day and easily world class, the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Also in DC, don't forget the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. It's one of my favorite modern art museums in the world, and I live 20 minutes from it. I don't go anywhere near often enough.
While the art collection is fantastic (hosted in an older set of gallery buildings by Charles Gwathmey, and a newer building by Thomas Phifer and Partners), the huge park it's located in makes it a particularly unique experience, featuring permanent outdoor pieces by the likes of Andy Goldsworthy, Richard Serra, and Michael Heizer.
I've been to many of the art and science museums in D.C. and Baltimore, but Glenstone is my favourite.
[1] https://www.glenstone.org/
The Walters and Baltimore Art Museum are also free.
Note that Udvar-Hazy is in the slightly odd position that it's technically free but parking is $15. It's very far from downtown, and driving is pretty much the best way there. But the exhibits are beyond cool -- a Space Shuttle, a Concorde, a Blackbird, and a ton of other very cool aircraft.
In my utopian vision of the world, museum guards are given rolling pedestals and pencils and told to roam the galleries copying. They can pay attention to what's going on around them and draw.
The result is that we have people there to answer questions and make sure nothing bad happens, but also is someone who's just getting better and better at drawing and painting. Then that person can become a great artist in their own right.
Our society's reward is an enormous amount of people who can paint really well. Murals everywhere. Good paintings everywhere.