BALTIMORE, MD.- The Baltimore Museum of Art today announced the opening of Malcolm Peacock: a signal, a sprout as part of its Turn Again to the Earth initiative exploring the relationships between art and the environment across time and geography. This exhibition features a monumental installation by the New York-based artist and long-distance runner, who spent his formative years in Baltimore, Maryland. The 8-foot tall and wide tree-like form is inspired by the giant, ancient redwood trees Peacock encountered while training for marathons in the Pacific Northwest and is covered with thousands of strands of hand-braided synthetic hair—the creation of which was itself an act of endurance and deep care. The exhibition is on view from March 19 through August 2025.

“Malcolm’s installation is a thought-provoking meditation on the emotional, spiritual, and physical power of nature. It also offers a critical pathway to dialogue about who has rights and access to nature as a universal and healing space,” said Asma Naeem, the BMA’s Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director. “I’m delighted to share this extraordinary work with our audiences, and to celebrate an artist with both roots in Baltimore and childhood ties to the BMA. We are honored to be able to offer a platform to talented artists who have been shaped, in part, by our city’s cultural fabric.”

Peacock made this work as he reflected on those experiences of immersion in the redwood forest, after he had returned to city life and began to meditate on how “ideas of landscape—the great outdoors—pertain and relate to, or don’t relate to, Black people in the United States.” The artist learned how to braid from his mother and sees a deep connection between braiding hair—an act of care and protection that bonds people together—and the interconnected systems that support life in the forest. In addition to more than 3,000 strands of hand-braided synthetic hair, the work includes pages from The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) and A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) that have inspired the artist. An atmospheric audio recording provides sounds of the artist breathing while running and in conversations with family, friends, and teammates. For Peacock, “sites of nature are ones that we can turn to, to remind us that we have intrinsic power.”

The sculpture was created as part of the artist’s residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem and is titled Five of them were hers and she carved shelters with windows into the backs of their skulls (2024). It debuted as part of Pass Carry Hold: Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2023–24 at MoMA PS1 in New York from September 26, 2024 to February 10, 2025, before traveling to Baltimore.

The exhibition is co-curated by Kevin Tervala, BMA Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Chief Curator, and Cecilia Wichmann, Curator and Department Head of Contemporary Art.

Malcolm Peacock (born Raleigh, NC 1994) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores the emotional and psychic spaces of Black people. His art often utilizes and alternates common physical actions—talking, gazing, braiding, singing, running—to emphasize the stakes and feelings that accompany being present in proximity to others and to oneself. In addition to MoMA PS1, Peacock has exhibited at Artists Space in New York, Terrault Gallery in Baltimore, the Institute of Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, the Prospect New Orleans triennial, and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. He has participated in residencies at the Studio Museum in Harlem, University of Pennsylvania, St. Roch Community Church, the Joan Mitchell Center, Denniston Hill, and the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. Peacock is the recipient of the 58th Carnegie International Fine Prize and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Roy Lichtenstein Award. He earned a B.F.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2016 and an M.F.A. from the Mason Gross School of Arts at Rutgers University in 2019.

This is the artist’s first solo museum exhibition and the second time Peacock’s work has been shown at the BMA. A watercolor painting created while he was a student at Summit Park Elementary School in Baltimore was presented at the BMA in 2003 as part of Art is for Everyone, the annual Baltimore County Public School student exhibition.