Claribel Cone and Etta Cone
Baltimore, Baltimore, Maryland
Marker Inscription
The Cone sisters Claribel Cone, MD (1864-1929) Etta Cone (1870-1949) Early collectors of Matisse, Picasso, and other modern artists. Their preeminent collection, housed in two apartments here, now fills the Baltimore Museum of Art's Cone Wing.
Erected by Bolton Hill Historic District
The Story
Baltimore sisters Claribel and Etta Cone traveled to Paris in the early 20th century and began buying the work of then-controversial modern painters like Matisse and Picasso, long before American museums took them seriously. They filled two adjoining apartments here with one of the finest private collections of modern art in the country. That collection now anchors the Baltimore Museum of Art's Cone Wing.
Why it matters
The Cones were pioneering American tastemakers whose eye for the avant-garde helped bring modern European art into the nation's cultural mainstream.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Claribel Cone
- · Etta Cone
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Florence R. Sabin
Baltimore, MD
Florence Rena Sabin broke barriers as the first woman to hold a full professorship at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where she advanced the study of living cells and the lymphatic system. In retirement she returned to Colorado and led a sweeping reform of the state's public-health laws. Her statue represents Colorado in the U.S. Capitol.
Edith Hamilton and Alice Hamilton
Baltimore, MD
The Hamilton sisters each left a lasting mark. Edith Hamilton became one of America's most beloved interpreters of the ancient world as author of The Greek Way, while her sister Alice Hamilton essentially founded the field of industrial medicine, exposing the dangers of lead and other toxins to American workers.
Grand Army of the Republic Sundial
Baltimore, MD
The Grand Army of the Republic was the great fraternal order of Union veterans who had marched home from the Civil War, and by the 1930s their ranks were thinning fast as the old soldiers passed into memory. This sundial was placed in Baltimore in 1933 not by the veterans themselves but by their descendants — the Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War, a heritage society formed to keep faith with the men of 1861–1865. A sundial makes a fitting tribute: a quiet instrument marking the passage of time over a generation that was slipping away.
Community Memorial to Those Who Served
Baltimore, MD
War memorials dedicated to "the men and women of this community who served their country in all wars" became a fixture of American towns and neighborhoods in the twentieth century, especially in the decades after World War I and World War II, when communities wanted a permanent, public way to honor local service and sacrifice. Framing the tribute "to the glory of God" reflects the sacred, often church-adjacent tone many such memorials carried, treating military service as a solemn civic and moral duty. Its explicit inclusion of women who served marks the broadening of who a community recognized as having answered the nation's call.