Mr. Ian Keown
c/o Gourmet Magazine
560 Lexington Ave.
New York, N.Y. 10022
Dear Ian,
I've just finished reading your piece on Baltimore in the November issue of Gourmet, and I want to congratulate you for an eye-opening look at this town.
In one visit here you found out things that I would never have believed if I hadn't seen them right there in your article.
Take Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director David Zinman. Boy, I want an appointment with whomever's been giving Mr. Zinman youth treatments!
I'm referring, of course, to the picture identified as "David Zinman conducting the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra." The last time I saw Mr. Zinman, he looked considerably older than the young guy in the picture, and he didn't have anywhere near as much hair.
In fact, if you hadn't told me differently, I'd have sworn the guy in the picture was David Lockington, the associate conductor of the BSO.
But where you really amazed me, Ian, was in your revelations about art in Baltimore. For instance, I simply must tell Walters Art Gallery curator William R. Johnston about "William Walters, who built at the turn of the century a mansion-museum for his extraordinarily eclectic collection of art . . ."
Bill Johnston has been working on a history of the Walters family and gallery for years now, and he still thinks it was William's son Henry who built the building, more than a decade after William's death.
Then there's the case of the works at the Walters. Roaming its galleries, you came upon Monet's paintings "Waterloo Bridge" and "Charing Cross Bridge." That's really going to be news to a lot of Baltimoreans who are used to seeing those two paintings at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 25 blocks up Charles Street from the Walters.
I had a feeling the museums in this town were cooperating with one another more lately, but the BMA's giving two Monet paintings to the Walters was something even I wouldn't have expected.
And that's not all. The Walters, you write, also features works by Titian and Gainsborough. I'm stupified that in this publicity-conscious age, the Walters has never put its works by these great masters on view, or made any mention of them except, apparently, to you.
We in Baltimore must take the Walters to task for keeping such treasures hidden away.
And we in Baltimore must learn to keep up with the changes that are taking place under our very noses and that only you seem to know about. Why just four years ago, when the last census was taken, our population was only about 736,000. Since then, you reveal, it has become "a city of just under two and a half million citizens."
Sen. Barbara Mikulski, you discovered, has changed her name to Michulski. Venerable old Mount Vernon Place has become Mount Vernon Square.
And Haussner's, probably Baltimore's most famous restaurant, is now in the Fells Point area, having moved (when?) from its longtime home 15 blocks to the east in Highlandtown.
Tell me, did they find a place in Fells Point big enough to accommodate the art collection?
So thanks, Ian, for all that info. We Baltimoreans are always grateful when someone notices our town, and I must say you're the most creative noticer I've encountered in a long time.
Yours, John Dorsey