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Hello Friends, It's been an incredible year and I can barely wait to introduce you to the reenvisionedContemporary.

The Board of Trustees and I have spent countless hours taking this museum apart and putting it back together again. We've spent the entire past year in an intensive listening process that sought counsel from many great minds community leaders and cultural producers in Baltimore and beyond. We were interested in e!ploring how The Contemporary could sustain itself as a leader of arts and culture while constantly broadening the ideas of audience and engagement. "ur deep listening left us with some of the best and most challenging advice we could have ever e!pected# we were told to be nimble responsive thoughtful and socially responsible. "ur conversations made it perfectly clear that Baltimore needed us to be in service of and for local artists while also sampling national and international contemporary art trends and discourses. "ur discussions confirmed that we needed to bring new and diverse audiences to the arts in order to have more robust and meaningful interactions. "ur research ultimately brought us back to $%&% and the bar The Contemporary originally set when it was first founded to e!pand the idea of a museum. Today The Contemporary is a nomadic non-collecting museum that dedicates its resources to commissioning site-specific and sub'ect-oriented pro'ects that engage diverse audiences and advance contemporary art and culture. "ur work is inspired by three guiding principles( artists matter, collaboration is key, and audience is everywhere. I am e!cited to announce the appointment of our inaugural Curatorial )dvisory Council# a committee of national leaders in the arts that will guide and advise our pro'ects and future programming. We are honored to have Elissa Blount-Moorhead, Emily Blumenthal, Thom Collins, Tom Finkelpearl, ick !owe, and "hamim M. Momin on our team.

They're immeasurably impressive and between the si! of them have launched many arts non-profits published e!tensively been appointed by the "bama administration to serve on the *ational Council of the )rts and even directed The Contemporary in the past+

We will also be launching an annual ,peaker ,eries- each year the venue and theme will change. In the spirit of furthering contemporary art education and fostering meaningful conn ections each and every speaker will also conduct studio visits with local artists. "ur ./$0 ,peaker ,eries CoHosts was organi1ed in collaboration with $2 local galleries and will be held at the Baltimore ,chool for the )rts. We prompted each gallery with one simple 3uestion( who is the one artist you want The Contemporary to bring to Baltimore? "ur first engagement is Coco Fusco a *ew-4ork based visual and performance artist whose lecture is being cohosted by 5uest ,pot gallery on 6anuary $2th. "ur following lectures are from artists #ick Cave 7cohosted by 8inebo! )rt Center9 Brendan Fowler7cohosted by *udashank9 and $ayne $hite 7cohosted by 5allery C)9.

"ur ne!t steps are to announce our first pro'ect opening in ./$0 e!pand our 8ast 8ro'ects archive so that everyone can have access to our robust twenty-four year history and continue organi1ing the lectures for CoHosts. :adies and gentlemen the future of The Contemporary is looking brighter than ever. Thank you for helping us get to where we are. I cannot wait to see you on 6anuary $2th+

Here%s to you,

;eana <aggag Director

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