ARTLAND

Stealth boats of today - advanced but pale patterns of camouflage cover our military ships. Camouflage as part of military tactics. It is great to see old ships full of painted patterns with the purpose to scare the enemy away!

Artists were for instance commissioned to paint abstract works on the vessels until the 20-ties. When seeing old photos it is like watching art works. I wish more private boats could be less conservative in their appearance.

In the Inner Harbour of Baltimore one can see this shark called USS Torsk SS-423. Although it looks like a shark, in Swedish the name means codfish, a delicious but endangered fish. And, it is true,

American submarines got names after fishes. USS Torsk started to be in use in the end of World War II.

The Inner Harbour of Baltimore hosts an Aquarium where you for instance can see real sharks. There is a Science Center with Planetarium and IMAX-theatre, The Maritime Museum and very close is also a Port Discovery Children's Museum. Not to mention all seafood and the speciality crab-cakes!

Being tired of all snow and winter in Sweden it was a relief to meet the spring and sun here.

Go visit AVAM in Baltimore!

Unique, open-minded, strange, curious, humorous, serious, political and above all a humanistic perspective.

Visionary Art Museum was opened in a former whiskey-distillery in Baltimore in the middle of the 90-ties.  From the beginning a no-go area, but today it is more integrated in the inner harbour environment and stretches out in three buildings and outdoor-spaces.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is the current theme, words taken from the declaration of independence and interpreted in many ways.  AVAM, American Visionary Art Museum,  has a collection of 4000 works by self-taught artists to choose in between, but rather loan new ones for every new exhibition.

War and Peace; Race, class and gender; Art, science and philosophy; The end is near – on faith and belief,  have been some of the themes during the years. Unexpected and surprising art works tackle those immense and bold subjects.

You can for instance take part on Roccaterrania, a small nation  with its own language, situated in the mountains between US and Canada, created by Renaldo Kuhler. It is not a Utopia, but the events of his life that is depicted in drawings. We meet the history, the architecture and the people involved. Women in uniform and long legs, science fiction scenes, political disputes – the stories they tell us are one of a kind.

I had the privilege to meet and speak to the founder and director Rebecca Hoffberger, who knows this art scene very well and is engaged 150% in all the development of the museum. AVAM has 400 volunteer workers! They run art projects together with people from shelters, homeless and drug-addicts. During some weeks they made an amazing car made of bottles, spoons, religious objects and a lot more things – for the art car parade.