BALTIMORE - Many cities boast about their array of fine art, science, and children's museums, and coastal burgs can throw in a brag about their aquariums, too. Baltimoreans can do that, but they'd just be getting started.
How many cities can inspire tourism with figures of notable blacks cast in wax? Or with the National Museum of Dentistry? Or send you rolling 'round the roundhouse of the nation's first railroad? If they stopped there, they'd be leaving plenty out.
The crown jewel of Baltimore's museum menagerie is the American Visionary Art Museum, which sits in a fanciful building at the foot of Federal Hill. It is the product of efforts that founder and director Rebecca Hoffberger undertook in 1985; it opened about 10 years later.
It is a showcase for works that wouldn't find a home in many other places but are stirring nevertheless; some go beyond that, to haunting or even disturbing. All the exhibits were made by individuals who received no formal training for their art but were moved by an internal creative urge.
Hoffberger said she had a vision in 1991 that gave her topics for the museum's first 11 annual shows; the seventh of them, "The Art of War and Peace," is on display until Sept. 1. A different person curates each show. Michael Bonesteel —the managing editor for three newspapers in suburban Chicago who has written a book about the outsider artist Henry Darger — is responsible for "War and Peace." Each exhibition segment is introduced by quotes about war ranging from Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Universal Soldier" to quotes from Albert Einstein and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The first-floor exhibit, "Battlefront," is a collection of work emanating from the front lines, including Hmong war quilts and work by Americans who fought the Vietnamese. Perhaps the most affecting is Irving Norman's "Victory Parade," a large oil on canvas that depicts soldiers in review carrying rifles - fixed with cleaver-like bayonets that belch fiery plumes filled with terrified souls.
At the B&O Railroad Museum, they celebrate history, vision, and mechanical might. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad laid its cornerstone 174 years ago, seeking to keep pace with the growth the Erie Canal brought to New York State. The big attraction is the roundhouse, said to be the largest circular industrial building in the world. Its centerpiece is a carousel, which, in its day, could turn a railroad car around under the power of a single man.
It has 22 bays, whose occupants today go a long way toward demonstrating the evolution of rail cars in America, beginning with a replica of the B&O's first practical steam locomotive, dating from 1832. Some of the cars have wooden stairs beside them, indicating that it's OK to climb aboard. Museum folks are particularly excited about events already underway that will culminate with a citywide celebration next Fourth of July, the 175th anniversary year of railroading in America.
The museum is affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, as is the National Museum of Dentistry, which owes its locale (the University of Maryland's Baltimore campus) to the founding in 1840 of the world's first dental college.
Dentistry isn't the sexiest subject for a museum, acknowledged in one of its promotional materials that says: "We did the impossible. We made a dental museum that is dazzling, educational, and fun." It's a fair boast.
The museum is a fairly lively place geared toward children, who would most benefit from the proselytizing. But few adults won't cringe upon seeing the first devices for pulling teeth, and the room set aside for George Washington's dental work is thorough and interesting (and he never had wooden dentures).
Another Baltimore original is housed in a former firehouse across town, on East North Avenue. The Great Blacks in Wax Museum - the creation of Elmer Martin, who died last year, and his wife, Joanne Martin, who continues as executive director - attracts nearly a quarter-million visitors a year.
The first clue to the museum's sweep appears just inside the door, where Hannibal sits on an elephant. Farther inside are figures of ancient kings and queens including Imhotep, builder of Egypt's step pyramids. The scene quickly shifts to eras of slavery and the Civil War.
At the end of the first hallway, one can go downstairs, where a series of depictions of lynchings is so chilling that a parent's advisory precedes it, or upstairs, to a Maryland-theme exhibit that includes a figure of star-crossed Celtics star Reggie Lewis. On the ground floor, the dioramas feature many living black achievers, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and NAACP president Kweisi Mfume.
The final stop on the museum tour is a Maryland Avenue storefront that stands alone in tone and subject matter: The American Dime Museum, operated by Dick Horne and James Taylor.
There's no security, not even a cash register, just a box to hold a day's receipts. On the day I visited, Horne was manning the door: "Do you want the spiel, or do you just want to look around?" he said. I took the spiel. He explained that the Dime is dedicated to America's first museums, which sprang up with the advent of leisure time. He said they were among the first outposts for family entertainment - "the Disneylands of their day" - and often the first opportunity for Americans to see things that came from outside their neighborhoods.
Which is not to say that everything was authentic. If folks heard tell of some other museum that had, say, an authentic Peruvian Amazon mummy, then the local house had to get one too, and the Dime has one, safely encased in glass. Whether it's an actual mummy, never mind Peruvian Amazonian, isn't the point at the Dime, whose mission is to show what those early museums were like.
There's also a Samoan Sea Wurm, every bit as authentic as the mummy. But there are a few two-headed animals (real but stuffed), a butterfly-wing "painting" from the late 19th century, and a wax figure of Daniel Lambert, world-famous when he died at 39, weighing 739 pounds. A lot of the stuff is kitschy, including the wax-figure Last Supper next door, but it's perfect for the subject matter, and a perfect way to end a tour of museums that are like no others.
SIDEBAR: Baltimore itinerary
Saturday
10 a.m. Ride the rails B&O Railroad Museum
901 W. Pratt St.
410-752-2490; www.borail.org.
$5-$8
You'll know you're there when you see all the rolling stock in the yard.
11:30 a.m. Open wide The Samuel D. Harris National Museum of Dentistry
31 S. Greene St.
410-706-0600
www.dentalmuseum.umaryland.edu.
$2.50-$4.50
It's plush, colorful, and filled with interactive exhibits as well as lots of dental artifacts.
1 p.m. Crab cake time Faidley's Lexington Market
400 W. Lexington St.
410-727-4898
About $20 (platter and drink).
Go for the big-chunk crab cake.
3 p.m. Wax eloquent The Great Blacks in Wax Museum
1601-03 E. North Ave.
410-563-3404
$3.75-$6
A unique celebration of heroic blacks in world history.
6 p.m. Dinner Obrycki's
1727 E. Pratt St.
410-732-6399
Crab seasonally priced; other entrees, $13-$29.
Go for the specialty: crab steamed in spices and dumped on the table. Reservations taken until 6.
Sunday
10 a.m. Brunch Hull Street Blues
1222 Hull St., Locust Point
410-727-7476
$13
The buffet, served on a covered, old-style shuffleboard table, is more lunch than breakfast, but the Grand Marnier French toast is made to order. Reservations recommended.
11:30 a.m. The vision thing American Visionary Art Museum
800 Key Highway
410-244-1900; www.avam.org
$6-$8
Before going inside, check the whirligig outside.
3 p.m. Drop a dime American Dime Museum
1808 Maryland Ave.
410-230-0263
$3-$5
See what thrilled the first museumgoing Americans more than a century ago.
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