Mayor Brandon Scott allocated $100,000 in taxpayer money for portraits of the last five Baltimore mayors, including two who left office amid corruption scandals, defending it as a way to balance and redress local history.

“When I made the decision to honor the four mayors who preceded me with their official portrait, I knew it would come with criticism,” he wrote in an Instagram post following the unveiling on Saturday of paintings of former mayors Sheila Dixon, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Catherine Pugh and Bernard C. “Jack” Young at the City Hall Rotunda.

(Scott’s own portrait, by artist Ernest Shaw, will not be displayed until after he leaves office.)

As part of what the mayor called a “Faces of Leadership” initiative subsequently redubbed “Portraits of Power,” the paintings will be hung in the Hyman Pressman Board Room along with the all-male cast of prior mayors, starting with James Calhoun in 1797 and ending with Mayor Martin O’Malley (1999-2007).

“Every other mayor in the history of the city had a portrait except them,” he said in his social media post, including those who did some bad things.

“Before judging, know the complete history which is what the portrait room now depicts,” he wrote, ticking off the actions of mayors who were disloyal to the Union during the Civil War, were anti-immigrant and who approved the first redlining law.

Scott didn’t name names, but those mayors can be identified as George William Brown, who conspired with Maryland Governor Thomas Hicks to burn down railroad bridges north of Baltimore at the start of the Civil War; Thomas Swann, head of the anti-immigrant Know Nothing party that flourished in Baltimore in the 1850s; and J. Barry Mahool, who signed an ordinance passed by the City Council in 1910 that barred Black families from moving into white residential blocks.

At Saturday’s unveiling, there was no mention by Scott of Mayor Dixon’s 2010 resignation following her embezzlement conviction for appropriating gift cards intended for the poor or of Pugh’s 2019 resignation and two-year prison term for tax evasion and conspiracy in connection with her “Healthy Holly” children’s books.

Likewise, there was no reference to the widespread criticism of Mayor Rawlings-Blake in the wake of Freddie Gray’s 2015 fatal injuries while in police custody and protests that cut short her political career – and helped propel Scott into a more prominent role in the City Council.

Following Pugh’s resignation, Scott replaced Young as president of the City Council, then beat him in the 2020 Democratic mayoral primary.

“History,” Scott mused yesterday, “is rarely a bumpless road but will always be based in truth and fact.”

Posting in defense of commissioning portraits of recent past mayors, Brandon Scott points to other mayors with tarnished histories. (mayorbmscott Instagram)

Posting in defense of commissioning portraits of recent past mayors, Brandon Scott points to other mayors with tarnished histories. BELOW: RFQ for the mayor’s portrait competition. (mayorbmscott Instagram)

Audience for the Nov. 1, 2025 unveiling of mayoral portraits at Baltimore City Hall. (Facebook)

ABOVE and BELOW: Audience at the November 1 unveiling of mayoral portraits at Baltimore City Hall. (Facebook)