Image: Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
The Walters Art Museum will present the 2026 Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize Finalists Exhibition, bringing together work by five artists in sculpture, photography, video and painting. The exhibition is set to open on Aug. 1 and run through Aug. 27, with finalist artist talks on the opening day and an award ceremony at the end of the month. The museum describes this year’s presentation as the first time the finalists exhibition has been shown in Hackerman House at One West Mount Vernon Place, a historic home on the museum’s campus.
The Sondheim Prize, presented by Create Baltimore in partnership with the Walters Art Museum and supported by the Maryland State Arts Council, is an annual $30,000 award for Baltimore-area artists. According to the museum’s announcement, the prize continues to be supported by the Sondheims’ philanthropy and by a broader network of donors, foundations, corporations and public grants. Admission to the Walters is always free, and the museum lists the exhibition location at 600 N. Charles Street in Baltimore.
This year’s finalists are Thea Canlas, Leigh Davis, Brandon Donahue-Shipp, Curran Hatleberg and Danni O’Brien. The museum’s email highlights the range of practices among them. Canlas is described as a Baltimore-based Filipina-American artist whose conceptual, research-driven work explores diasporic Philippine identity through sculptural objects, installations and digital media. Davis’s interdisciplinary practice addresses mourning and bereavement, while Donahue-Shipp combines painting, assemblage, mural-making and collage to examine how everyday objects carry histories of labor, place and community.
Hatleberg, a Baltimore-based photographer, has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the High Museum, Mass MoCA and the International Center of Photography. O’Brien, also based in Baltimore, works across drawing, sculpture, ceramics and installation, with a practice rooted in tinkering and queerness and shaped by post-human, cyborgian forms. The museum’s promotional text emphasizes the variety of media in the finalists exhibition and its setting within Hackerman House, where the work will be seen alongside the building’s architecture and collections.
The finalists’ talks are scheduled for Saturday, Aug. 1, from 3 to 4:30 p.m. The museum says the free program will let audiences hear directly from the artists about the works on view, followed by a Q&A session. The award ceremony and reception will take place on Thursday, Aug. 27, from 6 to 7:30 p.m., when the 2026 winner will be announced.
The Walters’ email also quotes BmoreArt executive director and publisher Cara Ober, who says the artists demonstrate “the intellectual ambition, technical sophistication, and conceptual range that define contemporary art at its highest level,” and notes the dialogue between the work, the museum’s architecture and its collections. The exhibition is open during the Walters’ regular hours: Wednesday and Friday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday, 1 p.m. to 8 p.m.; closed Monday and Tuesday.
