by the 1930s, the public reception was such that director roland mckinney, in a letter to board chairman henry treide, noted, "people seem to feel that the museum belongs to them and show that they are sincerely proud of it and its activities." unfortunately, these people were mostly upper-crust, privileged, and white, a fact noted in a 1937 carnegie corporation report. "[baltimore] cultural institutions (outside of the library and the schools) have appealed to, been intended for, and been supported by a pretty small minority... they need to be opened up, for the viewpoint of the entire community and its needs", it concluded. local artists were feeling slighted, as well. “we, the living, resent being left to work in a vacuum of indifference and neglect while so much of the dead past is exhausted [by the bma],” the president of the artists’ union of baltimore complained to "the evening sun" in 1937. the writer of the letter was morris louis, whose work, decades later, would be in the bma's contemporary collection. treide responded with an extensive community outreach survey and, in 1939, presented the city's first exhibition of african-american art. the show drew over 12,000 visitors in two weeks.