The performance by Jefferson Pinder is one of more than 100 new acquisitions recently announced by the institution
The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) has recently acquired more than 100 works in line with the institution’s efforts to diversify its holdings, emphasizing connections to the Baltimore area and highlighting the work of women artists and artists of color. The museum is also diversifying the media represented in its holdings: interdisciplinary artist Jefferson Pinder’s Ben-Hur (2012) is the first performance art piece in the museum's collection.
Pinder’s incisive, ambitious work contemplates the intersection of art, labour politics and the Black American experience, rendering simple, dynamic conceits on an operatic scale. Ben-Hur is no exception; the performance involves six Black men engaging in actions that reference the visual history of labour in art. The BMA’s acquisition includes both 2013 video documentation of a past performance and detailed instructions on how to stage it live in future iterations.
—Torey Akers, January 12, 2024.