If you’ve been meaning to visit the cool American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, now’s the time to go. Summertime Thursday evening admissions are free from 5 to 9 p.m., followed by movies shown under the stars on a 30-foot outdoor screen. Flicks from the Hill are every Thursday evening through August 25th, and moviegoers can bring a picnic or buy popcorn and hotdogs on site.
The movies this summer celebrate the theme of the museum’s biggest current exhibit, "What Makes Us Smile?" co-curated by the museum’s founder and director Rebecca Hoffberger, artist Gary Panter, and Simpsons creator Matt Groening. Comedic films from Some Like it Hot to Men in Black are scheduled for screening. Click here for the line-up.
The museum itself is a joy. After checking out the whimsical sculpture garden and admiring Nadya Volicer‘s “Smile” welcome mat made from recycled toothbrushes, follow a hallway festooned with boxes of your most beloved childhood board games, and dangling model planes and helicopters to the three-floor gallery. It’s the kind of place that features a massive collection of Pez dispensers and a Whoopee Cushion bench.
The day I visited, I lingered longest in a space staged as a bedroom featuring a bed with a headboard of beads and beetle wings, creating an intricate and spot-on portrait of MAD Magazine‘s Alfred E. Neuman by artist Patty Kuzbida.
A glass case brimming with vintage toys was nearby, including a parade of every action figurine from under your brother’s childhood bed snaking around a double-decker London bus and toy cars of all makes and models.
Steps away: a dog made from guitar parts, picks, and sequins posed under an archway of coconut heads; an enormous and elaborate candy-dotted gingerbread house filled a corner of the room; a blue Electrolux refitted into a space rocket dangled from the ceiling; and this quote from Bill Cosby was painted on the wall:
“Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home.”
If yours are back home, take them to see a free outdoor movie and the coolest art around at the AVAM in Baltimore.
