MCHC invites parents, families, and children to enjoy a family drop-in activity and free museum admission between 10:30 am and 1:00 pm. Family visitors can make and sail cork boats like the Ark and the Dove, or try their hand at a local Baltimore tradition: window screen painting.
Join fashion historian and curator Jonathan Michael Square, PhD, for a lecture exploring Black dandyism as a powerful expression of agency, resistance, and refinement. Drawing on his contribution to Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, the Met Gala 2025 theme and the Costume Institute’s spring 2025 exhibition, Dr. Square will examine the significance of livery through the lens of the Maryland Center for History and Culture’s own purple livery suit, which was featured in the landmark exhibition.
MCHC serves as the hub for the 2025 Doors Open Baltimore and welcomes attendees with free admission and a special look inside of the historic Enoch Pratt House. Hosted by the Baltimore Architecture Foundation, Doors Open Baltimore is an annual city-wide festival honoring Baltimore’s diverse culture and charm by highlighting its vibrant neighborhoods, captivating architecture, and distinctive spaces.
MCHC Press proudly presents a new publication, When Claiborne Bridged the Chesapeake: The Rise and Fall of the Ferry Era, with Marty Bollinger, author and historian. Bollinger explores the trials and triumphs of establishing and maintaining ferries as an economically viable mode of transportation between Maryland’s Western and Eastern Shores during the 19th and early-20th centuries from Claiborne, including the politics of the day that inspired the desire to connect Baltimore to the Eastern Shore.
Historian and author Christian J. Koot, PhD, joins us for an in-depth lecture on maps of Colonial Era Maryland, pulled from MCHC’s collections. Koot will analyze the inaccuracies within the geographic details, people, languages, and scale that are characteristic of the time, and give insight as to how cartographers gathered and presented such information.
Doors open at 10:30 am. Lecture begins at 11:00 am. Light reception to follow.
Presented by Maryland Public Television, join us for an evening preview screening of Ken Burns’ The American Revolution, an expansive, evenhanded look at the virtues and the contradictions in the fight for independence and the birth of the United States. Attendees are invited to generate a time capsule letter to future generations, detailing their lives, thoughts, and feelings on the current state of American democracy.