Long before Matisse was Matisse, two Baltimore sisters were buying his work by the roomful. Dr. Claribel and Miss Etta Cone — heirs to a textile fortune, based in an Eutaw Place apartment they filled floor-to-ceiling with modern art — assembled one of the greatest private collections ever gathered: more than 3,000 works, including over 500 by Henri Matisse, plus Picasso, Cézanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh.
They bequeathed it all to the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1949, and the Cone Wing remains the BMA’s crown jewel — the largest and most comprehensive Matisse collection in a public museum anywhere. The galleries pair the masterpieces with photographs and furnishings from the sisters’ apartment, so you meet the collectors along with the collection.
The Cone Collection galleries are at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive, free with the museum’s always-free admission. It is, quietly, one of the great art rooms in America.
