Lynn Silverman

6 Free, Must-See Art Exhibits this Fall

By Cara Ober, BmoreArt
9/20/2025 5:30 a.m. EDT

This story is part of a partnership with The Baltimore Banner and BmoreArt to provide monthly pieces focusing on the region’s artists, galleries and museums. For more stories like this, visit BmoreArt.com.

Welcome to the fall. The fall of American democracy, you ask? Perhaps. But also to this lovely autumnal season replete with crisp air, apple cider doughnuts and jackets — a special time of year when orange facial foundation changes to a deep pumpkin spice hue.

All political jokes aside, there is a plethora of great art exhibitions happening in Baltimore this season. Rather than doomscrolling and posting clever burns against your foes on social media, I encourage you to put on your cute shoes and head to Baltimore’s fabulous galleries for great art, free wine and interactions with a wonderful community of creative people.

These are just a few of my favorite free exhibits happening this month.

Lynn Silverman, ‘In A Matter of Time’
Goya Contemporary Gallery
3000 Chestnut Ave. (Mill Centre Studio 211)
Through Nov. 1

Photography is believed to be an accurate medium for capturing a realistic moment in time, but often what we try to achieve is simply unphotographable. Our experiences are ephemeral and multifaceted; most photos fall short of the ideal images in our mind compared to the ones we’ve actually taken.

Lynn Silverman is a photographic artist who works in exactly the opposite way, so much so that her black-and-white images can be confusing, confrontational and abstract. Silverman often photographs a mundane object, but in a way that prioritizes the language of the camera and the darkroom: flavors of light, velvety contrast and a shallow depth of field that creates moments of lucid clarity while the rest is a blur.

The internationally acclaimed photographer and former Maryland Institute College of Art professor has spent a career pushing beyond the traditional boundaries of her medium in new and unexpected ways. Her latest series, “In A Matter of Time,” centers on archival panoramic photos and vintage photographic scrolls depicting early 20th-century life. As her camera zeroes in, she re-illuminates, reanimates, crops and rotates the images to reveal hidden scripts and details, luxuriating in the hidden lives buried in these objects as well as their unique physical characteristics.

“Given the relationship a photograph inevitably has with the past, my desire is to focus on the act of remembering,” Silverman said. “My manipulation of the scrolls attempts to evoke how the gap between the photograph and memory continues to widen as the time when the picture was taken recedes further into the past.”

Also at Goya Contemporary: Check out Liam Davis’ solo exhibition, “Living With It,” which runs through Nov. 1.