The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century

Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the birth of hip hop, the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) has opened a groundbreaking exhibition that explores the political, cultural, and aesthetic attributes that have made hip hop a global phenomenon and established it as the artistic canon of our time. The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century features more than 90 works of art by some of today’s most important and celebrated artists, including Derrick Adams, Mark Bradford, Lauren Halsey, Julie Mehretu, Adam Pendleton, Tschabalala Self, Hank Willis Thomas, and Carrie Mae Weems, as well as several with ties to Baltimore and St. Louis such as Devin Allen, Monica Ikegwu, Amani Lewis, Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola, Damon Davis, and Jen Everett. Their work is presented in dynamic dialogue with fashion and objects created and made famous by Lil’ Kim, Dapper Dan and Gucci, and Virgil Abloh for Louis Vuitton, along with iconic brands like Cross Colours and TELFAR. Together, the works in The Culture weave a compelling narrative about art and culture that is rarely experienced in a museum context—and one that highlights a broad array of conceptual and material innovation. The exhibition has significant personal and communal resonance for those steeped in hip-hop culture, while providing a crash course into the explosive impact of the genre over the past two decades for those less versed.

Hip hop first emerged as music from Black, Latinx, and Afro-Latinx Americans living in the Bronx in the 1970s. It quickly proliferated through large-scale block parties to encompass an entire culture that includes the four pillars of MCing or rapping; DJing; breakdancing; and graffiti writing and arts. From its inception, hip hop critiqued dominant structures and cultural narratives and offered new avenues for expressing diasporic experiences and creating alternate systems of power, leading to a fifth pillar of social and political consciousness and knowledge-building. Over the past two decades, in particular, technology, social media, and capitalist interests have enabled hip hop to grow in complexity and reach, taking on new regional styles across the United States and around the world.

The Culture explores this pivotal and fertile era through a wide range of painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, video, and installations organized in six themes—Language, Brand, Adornment, Tribute, Ascension, and Pose. The exhibition experience begins as visitors encounter a pulsing soundscape created by Baltimore-based musicians Abdu Ali and Wendel Patrick, plus several artworks placed outside of the gallery, including a large-scale tribute to Nike Air Force 1 sneakers. The gallery design created by the Washington, DC-based firm SmithGroup veers away from the white cube aesthetic typically seen in museums and incorporates engaging displays for the archival materials. The final gallery of the exhibition features an interactive installation called “For the Record” that invites the public to share their hip hop experiences to create a living public archive that recognizes hip hop’s community-centered roots.

The Culture is a ticketed exhibition co-organized by the BMA and the Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) and on view in Baltimore from April 5 to July 16, 2023, and St. Louis from August 25, 2023, to January 1, 2024. It is co-curated by Asma Naeem, the BMA’s Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director; Gamynne Guillotte, the BMA’s Chief Education Officer; Hannah Klemm, SLAM’s Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art; and Andréa Purnell, SLAM’s Audience Development Manager. The Culture is accompanied by an expansive catalog with contributions from more than 50 artists, writers, scholars, curators, and arts leaders. The exhibition and book are further supported by an extensive network of advisors, including community members, artists, and scholars in the study of hip hop. 

This exhibition is generously supported by the Henry Luce Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support is provided by The Alvin and Fanny B. Thalheimer Exhibition Endowment Fund.

Beats, rhymes, culture, and finances for this exhibition are generously provided by hip hop ambassadors “DJ Fly Guy” Flynn & Nupur Parekh Flynn, inventor of BAGCEIT®.