Prof. Flanagan's commissioned artwork in the Baltimore Museum of Art

Prof. Mary Flanagan's has two interactive installations in the newly opened Joseph Education Center of the Baltimore Museum of Art. 

"Visitors enter the center through the Experience Gallery, where they are greeted by three interactive installations created by artists: Flanagan's "Topophilia"; Derrick Adams' "Dew Drop Inn," a playroom with bright colors and bean bag chairs adorned with oversized arms, hair and other creature features; and Pablo Helguera's "Flower of Ancient Games," with five petal-shaped wooden tables that have game boards from different cultures integrated into the tabletops, from mancala (Africa) to backgammon (Iran) and chess (India).  "The artist says you can make up your own rules," Betancourt said, "but everyone at the table has to agree what the rules are." " (From The Baltimore Sun article:  Please touch the artwork: Baltimore Museum of Art opens expanded education center after $2.5 million renovation, Nov. 29, 2023) 

https://vimeo.com/884453516

[tunnel] (2023) is a commissioned artwork by the Baltimore Museum of Art in honor of the reopening of the Joseph Education Center. [tunnel] is a stainless steel playful sculpture that is a representation of Baltimore's famous Harbor Tunnel. Spanning the inner harbor, the tunnel connects 2 sides of Baltimore and is a feat of engineering. It also lies hidden underneath what has been a historic and bustling port and important Native American lands. The Harbor Tunnel is made by people to intersect and even overcome the natural world. I took the plans of the tunnel and made them material and tangible, so that we can begin to have conversations about what humans do to the natural world and how the Anthropocene might be rethought as a speculative exercise. With an organic rippling effect and blue lighting, the tangible [tunnel] becomes a shimmering, experiential and musical instrument around which to have embodied-aware conversations.

Prof. Flanagan combines haikus written collaboratively with her AI "Kay" to accompany the monumental artwork in the current exhibition opening 3 December 2023 alongside a piece called [hill]. Both pieces explore the phenomenology of place and technological - nature dichotomies, mediations, and connections.