When I stepped into The Peale this May for the Charm City Fringe Festival, I entered a building that, for many years, I had only seen out of the corner of my eye when I walked down Holliday Street. Now, amid the throng of people gathered for the annual festival of new theater and performance, there is an energetic buzz in the air as we squeeze around each other, making our way through the lobby. Visitors wearing headphones move their bodies around me to the rhythm of the silent disco, and the wave of others heading towards the next show carries me up the stairs. Artists and their collaborators weave through the crowd, rushing to change set pieces in the few minutes between performances. I shuffle from one gallery-turned-stage to another and stumble upon a line of folks dressed in their Sunday best. They tell me they came right from church and, like me, are here for the first time to see “A Solo of Strength,” a new theatrical piece written by a member of their congregation, artist Isaiah Robinson.
Nestled between the historic C.J. Youse Company Building and Zion Church of the City of Baltimore, The Peale originated as painter Rembrandt Peale’s Baltimore Museum and Gallery of the Fine Arts in 1814. Designed by architect Robert Cary Long as the first building in the Western Hemisphere intentionally built as a museum, the Federal-style building would go on to house Baltimore City’s first City Hall and one of the first public grammar schools for Black students before its 21st century transformation into Baltimore’s Community Museum.
The building avoided potential demolition after public protest in 1931 led to the establishment of the Municipal Museum, part of the now-defunct Baltimore City Life Museums network. It spent six decades in the building, from 1931 to 1997, presenting and preserving Baltimore’s history, eventually readopting the name The Peale Museum and seeing the building declared a National Historic Landmark.
For The Peale’s 21st century “(re)Founding Director” Nancy Proctor, the lasting impact of the Municipal Museum on the Baltimore community came from its practice of “social history, telling the stories of not just the rich people but the working class, and telling it through modest architecture rather than grand monuments, and artifacts, and things like that.”
For Nancy Proctor, the lasting impact of the Municipal Museum on the Baltimore community came from its practice of “social history, telling the stories of not just the rich people but the working class, and telling it through modest architecture rather than grand monuments, and artifacts, and things like that.”
When Proctor joined The Peale in 2017, this framework was at the core of the organizing for the renovation and reopening of the building that had been vacant since the Municipal Museum. Proctor was hired by the Peale Center for Baltimore History and Architecture, a nonprofit that had evolved out of early advocacy for the building’s preservation which began, as Proctor says, “almost immediately” after the 1997 closure.
The vision for a community-built social history of Baltimore continued to be the driving force behind the $5.5 million capital campaign to conduct major restorations to the building’s failing roof, masonry, and outdated accessibility infrastructure. Front of mind for the vision of the new museum was combatting misinformed narratives about the city.
“[Baltimore’s] narrative was so negative, and we continue to struggle with this today. The way that Baltimore is portrayed particularly in the popular press is very negative, and it’s a narrative that is driven by a very limited range of perspectives and information on the city,” Proctor said.
But The Peale, acting as what she called a “museum of Baltimore stories,” could be an antidote to this. “We could really showcase some of the stories that represented the aspects of the city that I felt were underrepresented,” she said.
Proctor pushed this idea of “storytelling” at a time in the museum landscape where this language was not yet common. As The Peale developed, people she described the museum to “would kind of scratch their heads and say, ‘Well, what does a museum of stories look like?’” she recalled.
The later years of The Peale Center’s capital campaign would answer this through a participatory kind of “proof of concept” where the organization offered use of the building prior to its renovation to anyone in the community. “[They could] have pretty much free rein to do whatever you want, and, of course, artists love that,” says Proctor.
From this invitation, Baltimore community members such as composer Scott Patterson, artist and curator Lynne Parks, and students across local universities had the space to put on new performances and exhibitions that may not have happened elsewhere. Simultaneously, The Peale team began the creation of a digital archive of Baltimore Stories, which has since expanded into a database of more than 3,000 oral histories available publicly on the museum’s website. The proof of concept generated a foundation of community interest in this new model of what a nonprofit arts platform could be and laid the foundation for the ongoing evolutions of The Peale’s programming.
Now simply called The Peale, the museum officially reopened the building in 2022. Since then, it has settled into its footprint as a museum motivated to navigate both rapidly growing interest and a commitment to making space for all parts of Baltimore. In 2024, leadership transitioned to Executive Director John Suau as Proctor stepped away from The Peale in order to prioritize the museum’s sustainability. The museum’s approach to community-driven storytelling persisted. “[The Peale’s mission] is reflected in how we coordinate exhibits and events and kind of just informs how we move throughout the space,” says Assistant Director of Operations and Programs Andie Townsend.
Townsend remembers “Objects Made Holy,” a recent exhibition organized by artist and educator Gina Pierleoni, as a landmark moment for this community-driven curatorial method. Pierleoni invited 40 Baltimore residents from a variety of backgrounds, ages, and identities to contribute an object that held personal significance to them. Gathered together, the objects spanned differences in cultures and histories to show how, as Pierleoni says in her curatorial statement, “stories are part of our connective tissue.” Pierleoni writes that the resonances between the exhibition’s message and The Peale’s philosophy as a space for all of Baltimore’s communities naturally brought the two together, “specifically because [The Peale’s] history and mission are built around Baltimore stories and community.”
As they enter the museum, visitors now pass through the first floor exhibits featuring what Townsend calls the “core stories,” where the building and the Peale family’s history are presented alongside acknowledgement of all those who connected to bring The Peale into the present. “Story quilts,” created as an early collaboration between The Peale and members of the African American Quilters of Baltimore — Sandra Smith, Rosalind Robinson, and Glenda Richardson — hang as tribute to the donors and supporters of the 21st century, markedly different than the conventional plaques that typically occupy museum walls. The second and third floors, known as “community platforms,” hold galleries equipped for exhibitions of any medium that an artist might practice. The Peale’s team uses these floors to bring to life the ideas that community members bring to them. “Community gets to come to us and say, ‘This is what we’d like to do,’ and I have the honor of getting the opportunity to make that happen with them,” Townsend shares.
“Community gets to come to us and say, ‘This is what we’d like to do,’ and I have the honor of getting the opportunity to make that happen with them,” Townsend shares.
As Artscape, Baltimore’s signature arts festival, returns to The Peale’s doorstep, Townsend said first-time attendees and returning patrons can expect free offerings from the museum’s community that show The Peale’s range as a public platform.
MICA’s LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting’s MFA thesis show, “NONET,” will be open alongside two special exhibitions: “Built to Last,” a blend of architectural photography and contemporary art exploring Baltimore’s historic landmarks, and “The Active Power of Touch,” an exhibit curated by Cheryl Fogle-Hatch featuring artworks that visitors can touch. These shows will accompany planned pop-ups within the museum highlighting staff and the 2026 cohort of apprentices in “The Guild,” The Peale’s flagship training program in historic building preservation. Stepping out the building, Townsend promises that Artscape visitors will experience “a very fun kind of surprise” with “outdoor activations that tie into the themes of The Peale’s ‘illumination’” — potentially hinting at the building’s gaslight history.
Townsend hopes that this year’s programming will bring more folks the breakthrough moments they witnessed at last year’s Artscape.
“I want [The Peale] to be a true gathering space where everyone feels welcome, and it’s a place where we can share our thoughts and ideas and not have any fear of judgement there,” Townsend said. “I want to see it full of people with different kinds of perspectives who get to come together and make something beautiful together.”