The Baltimore Museum of Industry’s Anita Kassof believes exploring the city’s future is just as vital as examining its past.
When Anita Kassof became executive director of the Baltimore Museum of Industry in February of 2015, it was only a couple of months before the Freddie Gray riots.
Needless to say, it was a difficult time for Baltimore in general, but the protests hit the city’s cultural institutions particularly hard. In the following months, school groups — the life force for the BMI and other museums — stopped visiting. Some schools were afraid to come downtown, while others were banned from doing so.
But Kassof knew the BMI was uniquely positioned to tell this painful chapter in Baltimore’s ongoing saga.
“There was an opportunity to curate a dialogue about what was going on in Baltimore after the unrest,” she says. “We took a look at what happens when manufacturing jobs disappear and asked a question: ‘What’s the human impact?’”
Kassof and the BMI answered that question with “Changing Baltimore,” an exhibition inspired by a series of tweets published by John P. Angelos, executive vice president of the Baltimore Orioles, which explored the link between the city’s loss of manufacturing jobs and the Freddie Gray protests.
“Changing Baltimore” featured eight powerful photos from local photojournalist J.M. Giordano and commentary from such Charm City thought leaders as Dan Rodricks of The Sun and Gerry Sandusky of WBAL-TV.
But most importantly, the exhibit included voices from the citizens of Baltimore. Kassof and her staff listened to working-class Baltimoreans describe how the city has changed.
“For a time, you could walk into Bethlehem Steel and get a job right out of high school,” Kassof says. “Once you could support a family without a college degree. By and large, that’s not possible anymore.”
Kassof empathized with those stories, and it’s that sense of empathy and leadership that is taking the BMI in a new, innovative direction.
A native of Princeton, N.J., Kassof was a founding staff member at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., a position she held for 12 years. Kassof then moved to Baltimore, where she spent 11 years as the associate director of the Jewish Museum of Maryland.
She remained there until a particular job opportunity — and a thirst for adventure — lured her to New York City.
“When I was offered the deputy director role at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, I couldn’t pass it up,” says Kassof. “It took me back to my roots of Holocaust curation and education.”
But being away from Charm City was harder than she originally thought.
“My husband [Josh Neiman] and I underestimated just how deeply rooted we are in Baltimore,” says Kassof, who lives in Mount Washington and has two children. “I came to value this community even more by leaving.”
Focus on the Future
Kassof’s commitment to Baltimore parallels her vision for the museum, which is located at 1415 Key Highway near the American Visionary Art Museum.
The BMI’s mission is to celebrate Baltimore’s industrial legacy, but Kassof believes that preserving that history is just as much about looking toward the future as it is celebrating the past.
As a direct result of her leadership, the BMI is shaping the story of Baltimore’s post-industrial renaissance.
“I have a strong grounding in Baltimore history,” says Kassof. “But my work in Jewish museums taught me how to tell inclusive stories that draw people from diverse backgrounds.”
The “Changing Baltimore” exhibition is but one example of BMI’s inclusive storytelling, and its success led to a follow-up series on de-industrialization, for which the museum won Baltimore magazine’s “Best Relevant Programming” award in 2016.
Kassof and the BMI have since unveiled a series of forward-looking exhibitions aimed at connecting Baltimore’s past, present and future.
“Baltimore: Then and Now,” which opened last February and concludes on Jan. 1, matched historical photos of Baltimore’s streets with more than 80,000 crowdsourced images of what those streets look like today.
In March, the BMI will launch a temporary exhibition featuring the work of Christopher Bathgate, a self-taught machinist who creates metal sculptures out of machines from the industrial era.
“These exhibits are an affirmation of the museum’s central vision — to take pride in our industrial history but also look forward to our promising future,” says Kassof.
Baltimore’s future, she says, includes the health care, education and technology industries, all of which are thriving in the city. Kassof specifically credits the youthful “maker-movement” at the Station North Arts and Entertainment District for “maintaining an energetic culture of innovation.”
Her plans for the museum are equally as ambitious. The BMI, which is already among the most frequently visited museums in the city, “starts from a position of strength, but there is tremendous untapped potential,” Kassof says.
Realizing that potential begins with expanding and beautifying the museum’s waterfront campus. Kassof plans to create the premier space for the community to interact with the harbor along South Baltimore.
All of this development will help the BMI tell the story of Baltimore’s transition from a proud hub of industry to a promising future of innovation. Most of all, the new exhibits will help the community realize what Kassof says she already knows to be true: “The Baltimore Museum of Industry is a true anchor for the community.”
For information about the Baltimore Museum of Industry, call 410-727-4808 or visit thebmi.org.
Brandon Chiat is a Baltimore-based freelance writer.
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