Lawrence Burney and Ellis Marsalis III Bring Baltimore Stories to BMA’s Violet Hour

A black-and-white still from the in-progress documentary Revisiting Ramona.

Baltimore will be the subject and the setting when Lawrence Burney and Ellis Marsalis III join the Baltimore Museum of Art’s Violet Hour on October 29th. The free evening brings together a reading, an in-progress documentary preview and a conversation about the city through writing and photography.

The BMA program runs from 6:30 to 7:45 p.m., with doors opening at 6 p.m. at the museum’s main campus, 10 Art Museum Drive. Registration is encouraged. For readers planning a weeknight visit, that earlier door time leaves room to arrive before the program begins.

Burney will read from No Sense in Wishing. Maryland Humanities selected the book for its 2026 One Maryland One Book program, the statewide community-reading initiative. The collection’s full title—No Sense in Wishing: Essays on Black Music, Belonging, and Baltimore—places music alongside questions of home and identity, making this an especially relevant stop for readers who follow the city’s cultural life.

Published in 2025 by Atria Books, the collection brings personal experience into conversation with Black music and the wider diaspora. Its statewide reading-program selection gives the museum appearance an additional context: an opportunity for readers to encounter the author after spending time with the essays, or to find a starting point for reading them.

The film portion is a special preview of Revisiting Ramona, which remains in progress. It revisits the neighborhood world documented in Marsalis’s 2004 book Tha Bloc: Words, Photographs and Baltimore City in Black White and Gray, published under the name t.p. Luce. The evening concludes with a conversation between Burney and Marsalis.

The program also connects with the BMA exhibition Flashback: Two Centuries of Baltimore Photography. Together, the reading and film preview offer two ways to consider how a city is remembered: through the language people use to describe belonging and the images that preserve everyday places. Reserve through the museum’s event page and check its current visitor information before heading out.