John Waters bequeaths his art collection to Baltimore Museum of Art, whose bathrooms will be named in his honor

[Ubiquitous]

John Waters, Baltimore’s self-proclaimed “Pope of Trash,” announced Wednesday
that he’s bequeathing some of the most precious things he owns —
approximately 375 prints, paintings and photographs — to the Baltimore Museum
of Art.

In a show of appreciation, museum officials will rename two bathrooms in the
East Lobby “The John Waters Restrooms” in honor of the cult filmmaker and
visual artist. The domed room in the European art galleries also will be
christened “The John Waters Rotunda.”

Waters sees the gesture as similar to the impulse that resulted in
“Fountain,” Marcel Duchamp’s famous 1917 sculpture of a urinal.

“Renaming the bathrooms was my idea right from the beginning,” he said. “They
thought I was kidding and I said, ‘No, I’m serious.' It’s in the spirit of
the artwork I collect, which has a sense of humor and is confrontational and
minimalist and which makes people crazy.”

Though Waters and museum officials declined to estimate the value of the
collection, it includes the works of such artists as Andy Warhol, Diane
Arbus, Roy Lichtenstein, Cy Twombly, Cindy Sherman — and Waters himself. The
collection contains nearly 90 prints, sculptures, videos and mixed-media
pieces created by Waters, who was the subject of a major retrospective at the
BMA in 2018 and who has exhibited his work at the prestigious Venice
Biennale.

“John is an international icon and more importantly, a local treasure,” said
Christopher Bedford, the BMA’s director.

“The collection is extraordinary because it demonstrates John’s reach into
the cultural world and his social dexterity," Bedford continued. "On the one
hand, there is this embrace of public vulgarity. But he’s also this
incredibly centered, tender, decent and dignified human being. The works can
be vulgar and glib, but they’re just as often aesthetically refined. That’s
what makes John so dear to this city.”

It was in the 1950s that the young Waters first paid a trip to the BMA and
discovered art’s power to generate strong emotions. The boy purchased a $2
poster of a Joan Miró artwork from the museum gift shop and taped it to the
bedroom wall of his Lutherville home.

“The other kids said 'why would you hang that up?’” recalled Waters, making a
disgusted noise in his throat to mimic that long-ago reaction. “That’s when I
realized that art could provoke, shock and cause trouble. At that moment, I
became a collector for life.”

Waters' donation is a restricted gift, which means it can never be sold. But
the artist said that negotiations for the bequest began long before the BMA
made a controversial decision to auction off three artworks from its
collection, including Warhol’s “The Last Supper,” to raise $65 million to
fund diversity initiatives.

The sale was called off on Oct. 28, just hours before two of the paintings
were scheduled to go under the gavel at Sotheby’s Auction House. Opponents
claimed selling the works would have violated a policy of the Association of
Art Museum Directors, which sets ethical guidelines for the field.

In the midst of the controversy, two former chairmen of the BMA’s board of
trustees said they would rescind $50 million in gifts they’d planned to make
to the museum.

Though Waters sided with opponents of the proposed sale, the public dispute
didn’t dissuade him from going ahead with his gift.

“I was against the deaccessioning,” he said, using the art world parlance for
selling works owned by a museum. “But I’m not going to penalize the Baltimore
museum. I wanted the art that I’ve been collecting for 50 years to go to the
place that taught me from the very beginning how powerful and how exciting
art is and how much trouble it can cause.”

Waters had personal relationships with many of the artists he collected, and
the meticulous files he assembled on the artworks will be part of the
bequest. The gift agreement also stipulates that an inaugural exhibition of
Waters’ collection will be held by the end of 2025, and that five artworks,
including one created by Waters, will be prominently displayed in the museum
at all times.

Waters is already having fun imagining which pieces will be on view — and in
which parts of the museum. The John Waters Restrooms, he thinks, might be a
logical choice. The filmmaker began to mentally run through his collection
and tick off the possibilities:

“I have a piece by Tony Tasset called ‘I peed in my pants,'" Waters said.
"There’s ’Wedged Lump’ by Mike Kelley that looks exactly like a giant turd. I
also have George Stoll’s chiffon toilet paper.

‘Thoughts of a Colored Man,’ which played at Center Stage in Baltimore, to
get a Broadway run

At St. John’s College, another side of artist Jacob Lawrence

John Waters bequeaths his art collection to Baltimore Museum of Art, whose
bathrooms will be named in his honor

"I have a lot of art that would work in a bathroom.”

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