Arts & Culture
During the mid-18th-century Golden Age of Annapolis, Maryland’s capital city was a center for arts and culture. Today, Annapolis and Anne Arundel County continue to offer a host of cultural opportunities.
Annapolis Chorale
The Annapolis Chorale is a non-profit artistic organization dedicated to enhancing community life through performing and producing a wide variety of music. The Chorale, which includes the Chamber Chorus, Chamber Orchestra, and the Annapolis Youth Chorus, has attained a national reputation for excellence and innovation. It remains dedicated to creating and presenting high-quality music
Annapolis Opera Company
Martha Wright and a group of determined fellow Annapolitans founded the Annapolis Opera Company 1972. Thanks to the enthusiastic support of countless volunteers, the organization has established itself as one of Maryland’s artistic gems. It offers a variety of artistically excellent professional opera productions at affordable prices
Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre, Inc.
Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre presented its first plays at the William Paca House and Garden in 1966. The following year, the Paca Garden was restored to its colonial appearance, and the Summer Garden Theatre moved into its present home in the Old Shaw Blacksmith Shop on Compromise Street, next to the Historic Annapolis Foundation Museum Store. A historic as well as cultural landmark in the city's Registered Historic District, the Old Shaw Blacksmith Shop appears in the city's records as far back as 1696. Restoration work began in 1983 to light caverns under the building that may have been part of an "underground railway" system. Today, Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre performers offer musical theatre under the stars throughout the summer months
Annapolis Symphony Orchestra The Annapolis Symphony Orchestra offers music lovers the finest classical repertoire performed by professional players in Classic Pops and family series concerts.
Arundelair Chorus of Annapolis, Sweet Adelines International
The organization offers women singers the opportunity to sing barbershop harmony locally. Its motto is Harmonize the World. Most performances are by request
Ballet Theatre of Maryland
This professional dance company offers ballet performances, lectures, demonstrations, and dance instruction. Most of its performances take place at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts.
The Bay Theatre Company
The not-for-profit, professional theatre located within walking distance of downtown Annapolis offers a four-play season, acting workshops and classes, benefit performances, and staged readings in an intimate, off-Broadway style house
Colonial Players, Inc.
Located in the heart of Historic Annapolis, Colonial Players offers exciting, live theatre year-round. Comedies, dramas, and musicals are performed in an intimate 180-seat theatre-in-the-round
Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts
Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts serves the Anne Arundel County community by providing a broad range of creative experiences through quality arts education and culturally diverse programs in the performing and visual arts. Based in Annapolis, Maryland Hall is a thriving, innovative home for artists of all kinds. It is supported by the dedication of area businesses, volunteers, visitors, students, community members, and educators. Its performances, classes, exhibitions, and workshops are designed to educate, entertain, and inspire.
Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament
Guests enjoy an exciting adventure back to the Middle Ages that is set inside an 11th-century-style castle. They feast on a four-course meal while watching pageantry, horsemanship, and an authentic medieval jousting tournament
Rams Head On Stage
One of the country’s top 25 music venues, the beautiful, smoke-free, seated nightclub offers an impressive array of national talent. Light fare and full beverage service is available before and during performances
Remember, Inc.
Remember, Inc. brings to life the memories of Annapolis’s 20th-century residents by celebrating their oral histories in theatrical presentations. Words, music, and photographs recreate special moments in Annapolis’s history.
Talent Machine Company
This performing arts company for youths from ages 5 to 19 is directed and choreographed by adults with professional Broadway and stage experience during the summer and Christmas seasons.
Them Eastport Oyster Boys
These Chesapeake troubadours provide a grin-a-minute comical musical history tour of Annapolis and the Chesapeake Bay through a performance featuring original songs and stories.
Art in Annapolis
Annapolis is home to more than 20 art galleries featuring pottery, paintings, and photography, all within a quarter-mile of the Maryland State House. West Annapolis and the Galleries at Quiet Waters Park and at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts help to round out the arts scene in a destination that is high on the list of discerning art lovers. Here is just a sampling.
American Craftworks Collection
The venue offers the broadest selection of American crafts in Annapolis. The collection blends contemporary crafts by the nation’s finest craftsmen with traditional crafts from the League of Maryland Craftsmen.
Annapolis Publishing Collection
The 14 State Circle gallery houses the collection of silver gelatin photographs by Marion Warren, oils by Ann Munro Wood, and selected works by Roxie Munro.
ARTFX
This Church Circle gallery celebrates the region’s best artists. It features handcrafted pottery, jewelry, glass, candles, sculpture, woodburning, photography, and paintings.
Aurora Gallery
Guests are invited to discover many distinctive paintings, watercolors, original prints, and fine crafts for the home. Elegant pottery, blown glass, and fine handcrafted jewelry are all represented in a unique collection.
Easy Street Gallery
The gallery represents more than 250 of America’s premier handcraft artisans. While they specialize in Art Glass, they also carry jewelry, ceramics, and sculpture.
Gallery 1683
Gallery 1683 celebrates the beauty of the Chesapeake Bay region with carved ducks, original fine art, glass, photography, wood boxes, and boats of the Chesapeake in an 18th-century building.
Marion Warren Gallery
Displays more than 100 rare silver gelatin photographs by the late, legendary photographer Marion Warren in his gallery overlooking the Maryland State House.
McBride Gallery
Annapolis’s largest art gallery features seven rooms of original paintings, sculpture, and fine graphics. Art lovers can view landscape, wildlife, still life, and nautical themes in a historic colonial home.
Wynn Bone Gallery
Features contemporary art in original oils, photography, and sculpture within Casa Nova, a fine silver and handmade jewelry store with eye-catching ceramic chickens.
Nearby galleries include:
The Galleries at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts
Several different gallery spaces with changing exhibitions featuring artists from Annapolis and the Mid-Atlantic region. Includes several Artist-in-Residence studios.
Mitchell Gallery at St. John’s College
Variety of fine art exhibitions ranging from Old Masters to contemporary art.
Galleries at Quiet Waters Park
Juried exhibits in two sunny galleries that change every six weeks. Features artists of the Baltimore-Washington-Annapolis area. Fine art and fine craft in a mixed media.
