Baltimore is about to see weaving become storytelling on a grand scale. From November 8, 2026, through February 28, 2027, the Baltimore Museum of Art presents Diedrick Brackens: lights at the end of the world, bringing together approximately 11 large-scale, handwoven tapestries and sculptural weavings on the third floor of its Contemporary Wing.
Brackens, born in Mexia, Texas, creates richly layered works that blend West African weaving, American Southern quilting traditions, and European tapestry-making. Working primarily with hand-dyed cotton, he moves fluidly between abstraction and figuration, interlacing allegory, autobiography, myth, and personal memory in compositions that reward slow, close looking.
For this exhibition, he turns to the Chesapeake Bay in the second half of the 19th century, a place of both peril and possibility. The Underground Railroad, which routed self-emancipated people to freedom through Maryland, forms a historical backdrop, while lanterns, suns, moons, and geese suggest navigation and endurance. Wild horses recall Assateague Island’s free-roaming herds, framed here as joyful symbols of emancipation and self-determination.
Newly commissioned poetry by Baltimore-based writer Joël Díaz appears on the gallery walls in conversation with the textiles, adding another local voice. Curated by Leila Grothe with Oscar Flores-Montero, the show invites visitors to find their own meanings in its fragments — and to celebrate freedom, intimacy, resilience, and belonging at 10 Art Museum Drive.
Photo: Baltimore Museum of Art
