By any standards, the year 1994 was an extraordinary one for the presentation of art in Baltimore. There were important exhibitions to be seen, but the big news was of major developments at several local institutions.
* An artful wing: In October, The Baltimore Museum of Art opened its 35,000-square-foot, $10 million New Wing for Modern Art, a building with a jarring exterior but a beautiful interior. It holds 15 galleries in which 157 works of art of the last 50 years have been given an illuminating installation.
The open plan of the wing, with galleries meeting at corners to create vistas spanning several spaces, allows works of art to be seen in multiple contexts. Among the works housed there are the 15 paintings and three drawings by Andy Warhol that the museum acquired in May, giving it the second largest holdings ** of Warhol paintings among the world's museums.
* Work at the Walters: The Walters Art Gallery last April named its former assistant director and curator of medieval art, Gary Vikan, as its new director. His primary task for the next several years will be the renovation of the 1974 building, in which the bulk of the collection is housed. The $6 million job will begin next spring and may not be finished until 1999 or later. It will involve an overhaul of the temporary exhibit galleries and the spaces where the museum's ancient through medieval and 19th-century art are exhibited.
* Historical action: In January, the Maryland Historical Society named Dennis A. Fiori, former director of the Concord Museum in Massachusetts, as its executive director. He announced intentions to make the society broader in its outlook and acted to make changes.
In October, the city announced it was donating the former Greyhound bus terminal on Park Avenue to the society. The building, with 19,000 square feet of space, is behind the society's present complex and will be largely devoted to exhibits.
In November, Fiori announced sweeping personnel changes, including departure of chief curator Jennifer Goldsborough, in order to alter the society's focus from decorative arts to a more broad-based social-history approach.
* More on museums: The Maryland Institute, College of Art, announced plans to buy the AAA building on Mount Royal Avenue near its present campus and convert its 50,000 square )) feet into library, classroom and studio use; the $4.4 million project is scheduled for completion in 1996.
The Baltimore City Life Museums broke ground for the Morton K. Blaustein City Life Exhibition Center, a 30,000-square-foot building scheduled to open next fall with three floors of exhibits on the city's history. In all, an $8.5 million project.
And, work is now more than half completed on the 35,000-square-foot complex of the American Visionary Art Museum on Key Highway. The $7 million museum, which will exhibit the work of outsider (untrained) artists, is expected to open before the end of next year.
* Money for the arts: In January, the New-York-based National Arts Stabilization Fund announced grants of $1 million to the Maryland Institute and $623,798 to the Baltimore Opera Company, following 1993 grants of $1 million each to the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Walters Art Gallery and Center Stage.
And there was no shortage of wonderful art on exhibit throughout the year:
* The Walters' finest: The biggest crowd-pleaser is the Walters' current "Gauguin and the School of Pont-Aven" (through Jan. 15). Even though it's much less about Gauguin than about the artists who gathered around him in the Brittany town of Pont-Aven in the 1880s, it's bringing in record crowds. Earlier, the Walters gave us "Treasures in Heaven: Armenian Illuminated Manuscripts," a world of rich color and moving images.
* African art: From Africa came two noteworthy exhibits: The Walters' "Secrecy" showed, through the works of many peoples, what African art reveals and conceals; and the art in "Benin: Royal Art of Africa" at the Baltimore Museum of Art reflected a rich and complex civilization that thrived for 500 years before it was conquered by the British at the end of the 19th century.
* Other BMA standouts: "Matisse Cutouts," an exhibit of 30 of these beautiful and joyous works, revealed the artist's fertile imagination and spiritual buoyancy in old age.
"Body and Soul" featured four installations dealing with issues that ranged from pornography to AIDS.
"Eugene Leake: Paintings and Drawings" celebrated the achievements of the Maryland landscape painter, now in his 80s, who continues to produce work at once optimistic and profound.
The current show, "I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin" (through Dec. 31), brings us the work of an African-American self-taught artist who in the 1930s and 1940s had a short but remarkable career. He left behind a body of work both bold and subtle, direct and complex.
* Album quilts: The Maryland Historical Society weighed in with the eight-month, two-part "Lavish Legacies: Baltimore Album Quilts," which with its accompanying book brought to light a wealth of new information on these much-admired quilts.
* A winning Artscape: This year's edition of the annual midsummer extravaganza Artscape was the best I've ever seen, with four principal shows that were well-conceived, curated and executed.
* Gallery highlights: Among area galleries, Grimaldis, which usually shows well-known artists, highlighted the work of two recent Maryland Institute graduates, Karl Connolly and Darrell Wilcox -- artists of compelling if pessimistic visions.
Trace Miller, also shown at Grimaldis, revealed in his latest work a deeper artist than we had previously seen. "Schemata" at Goucher College was another in a series of thoughtful shows curated by exhibitions director Helen Glazer.
And the current Maryland Art Place exhibit "Raoul Middleman: Narrative Paintings" shows a respected artist working at the top of his form.