Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize
Create Baltimore is proud to announce the 21st edition of the Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize. The prize will be awarded $30,000 to a visual artist or visual artist collaborators living and working in the Baltimore region. Though a multi-tiered approach to reviewing artists, jurors are working to identify an artist or artist team whose work is in conversation with contemporary art nationally and internationally, is an original vision and is on the cusp of making a leap in their work that this award would support.
Approximately five finalists will be selected for the final review for the prizes; their work will be exhibited in the Walters Art Museum June to September 2026. All Sondheim Prize Finalists will be awarded a Finalist Award of $3,000 each, and each semifinalist will receive an exhibition at The Peale Museum at Artscape 2026.
2026 Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize
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2026 Sondheim Art Prize
Create Baltimore is proud to announce the 21st edition of the Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize. The prize will be awarded $30,000 to a visual artist or visual artist collaborators living and working in the Baltimore region. Though a multi-tiered approach to reviewing artists, jurors are working to identify an artist or artist team whose work is in conversation with contemporary art nationally and internationally, is an original vision and is on the cusp of making a leap in their work that this award would support.
Approximately five finalists will be selected for the final review for the prizes; their work will be exhibited in the Walters Art Museum June to September 2026. All Sondheim Prize Finalists will be awarded a Finalist Award of $3,000 each, and each semifinalist will receive an exhibition at The Peale Museum at Artscape 2026.
The application deadline is 11:59 p.m. EST on January 5, 2026.
Apply Here -
Estimated Timeline
- Application deadline: January 5, 2026
- Announcement of semifinalists: mid-February 2026
- Announcement of finalists: mid-March 2026
- Finalist studio visits with Walters exhibition team: April 2026
- Finalist exhibition installation: June 15-19, 2026 (Wed-Fri, 9am-4pm)
- Finalist exhibition Press Preview: Tuesday, June 23, 2026 6pm
- Finalist exhibition duration: June 25 – September 13, 2026
- Finalist interviews: TBD July 2026
- Finalist exhibition deinstallation: September 14-15, 2026
- Award announcement: TBD, at 7pm, galleries open at 6pm
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Application Process
Image Submission Guidelines
- Artists may submit five (5) images of artwork for the first round of jury review.
- Images should be in jpeg format and be not larger than 3MB.
Video Submission
- Artists submitting time-based works may submit up to ten (10) minutes of work. The 10 minutes may include excerpts from up to five (5) works as long as the combined time totals no more than 10 minutes.
- Videos should be in .mov or .mp4 format.
Image & Video Submission
- Artists wishing to submit still and time-based works, subtract two (2) minutes from the allowed 10-minute time-based total for every still image submitted.
The application deadline is 11:59 p.m. EST on January 5, 2026.
Please contact Lou Joseph at ljoseph@promotionandarts.org with questions regarding the submission of sound-based works.
See Full Guidelines -
2026 Sondheim Jurors
Lauren Haynes is a curator and arts worker based in New York City. For two decades, Haynes has worked to build a more inclusive future for contemporary art through a curatorial practice rooted in community engagement and equity. Her work spans exhibitions, public programs, residencies, and outdoor installations that amplify the voices of Black artists and others often overlooked by mainstream institutions. She found her path to curatorial work through a college work study job at Oberlin’s Allen Memorial Art Museum. That formative experience, along with nearly a decade at the Studio Museum in Harlem shaped her commitment to representation at every level of the art world. Recent projects include Rest/Play (Governors Island, 2025); Jordan Casteel: field of view (Hill Art Foundation, 2024) and Lyle Ashton Harris: Our first and last love (Queens Museum, 2024). Haynes serves on the board of the Association of Art Museum Curators and AAMC Foundation and on the visiting committee for the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College. Haynes was a 2018 Center for Curatorial Leadership fellow and a recipient of a 2020 ArtTable New Leadership Award.
Jinny Khanduja is the executive director of the Cue Art Foundation in New York. Jinny Khanduja is a cultural producer, facilitator, writer, editor, administrator, and curatorial caretaker of artists’ work and ideas. She has worked across nonprofit and arts sectors for over 15 years, holding a wide range of roles that bridge programs, development, communications, and leadership. Her practice is grounded in a commitment to new forms of organizational stewardship—ones that challenge conventional models and bring programmatic and operational work into closer alignment. She is especially passionate about creating intentional spaces that can support artists conceptually and materially, while also questioning the systems they operate within. She values depth over scale, and believes in the lasting impact of focused, relational work.
Shellyne Rodriguez is an artist, educator, writer, and community organizer based in the Bronx. Her practice utilizes text, drawing, painting, collage and sculpture to depict spaces and subjects engaged in strategies of survival against erasure and subjugation. She earned her MFA from Hunter College in 2014, and a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2011. Shellyne has shown work at PPOW Gallery, Smack Mellon, MoCada Museum, the Cue Art Foundation and El Museo Del Barrio, and has had residencies at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop and the Latinx Project.
Apply for the 2026 Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize
The $30,000 prize will be awarded to a visual artist or visual artist collaborators living and working in the Baltimore region. Though a multi-tiered approach to reviewing applications, jurors will identify a creative whose work is in conversation with contemporary art nationally & internationally, is an original vision, and is on the cusp of making a leap in their work that this award would support.
Apply Now
Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize
Since 2006, the Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize, which is supported in part by the generosity of the Maryland State Arts Council, annually awards $30,000 to a visual artist or visual artist collaborators living and working in the Baltimore region. This year, five finalists will be selected for the final review for the prize and their work exhibited in the Walters Art Museum.
The purpose of the Sondheim Art Prize, and the finalists’ exhibition, is to assist in furthering the careers of visual artists or visual artist collaborators living and working in the greater Baltimore region. The prize is named in honor of Janet & Walter Sondheim, both of whom were instrumental in furthering arts & culture in Baltimore City. Janet Sondheim danced with the pioneering Denishawn Dancers, a legendary dance troupe founded by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. Walter Sondheim, Jr. was one of Baltimore’s most important civic leaders for over 50 years. He was deeply involved in the development of Charles Center and the Inner Harbor and continued to be civically active until his death in 2007.
Meet the Winner of the 2025 Sondheim Art Prize
The 2025 jurors — Jaqueline Cedar, Mike Cloud, and Jennie Goldstein — selected Amanda Leigh Burnham as the recipient of the $30,000 prize. Her vivid, chaotic compositions incorporate a variety of materials, styles, and techniques which result in three-dimensional collages that leap off the walls. Reminiscent of a comic book crossed with a stage set, her installations feature “totemic women that are folding in light of obstacles but who are contending with them.”
Burnham is a six-time Sondheim semifinalist, four-time MSAC Independent Artist Award winner, Creative Baltimore Fund awardee, and Rubys Grantee. Her work has been shown regionally, nationally, and internationally. A graduate of Harvard University (BA) and Yale University (MFA), Burnham is now a Professor of Art at Towson University.
In addition to Burnham’s, the Sondheim Finalists Exhibition also includes work by her fellow finalists: fiber art by Aliana Grace Bailey, paintings by Lillian Jacobson, spoken word poetry by Jacob Mayberry, and multimedia pieces by Wonchul Ryu.
BOPA Announces the Recipient of the 2024 Sondheim Art Prize
BOPA proudly announces the winner of the 19th annual Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize. The 2024 Sondheim Art Prize was presented by M&T Bank and supported by the generosity of the Maryland State Arts Council.
The jurors selected ceramicist Sam Mack as the recipient of the $30,000 prize. The 2024 Sondheim finalists also include weaver Helen Ascoli and mixed-media artist Amy Boone-McCreesh, recipient of the studio residency at the Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower.
Each finalist also received a $2,500 M&T Bank Finalist Award to assist them in preparing for the Sondheim Finalists Exhibition curated by Christine Sciacca, Curator of European Art at the Walters.
2023 Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize Recipient: Abigail Lucien
The 2023 Sondheim Finalists also include mixed-media installation artist Nekish Durrett and Baltimore-based painter Kyrae Dawaun.
Questions About the Sondheim Art Prize?
If you have questions about the Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize, contact Grants, Competitions, & Exhibitions Manager Lou Joseph at 443-263-4339 or ljoseph@promotionandarts.org.
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Explore available resources for artists in Baltimore City, including grants, art prizes, mural projects, and more.
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