BOPA announces 2025 Sondheim finalists

The Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts (BOPA) has announced the five finalists for the 2025 Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize.

This prestigious visual arts honor is presented by BOPA in partnership with the Walters Art Museum and supported by the Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC).

2025 Sondheim Finalists

The finalists for the 20th edition of the Sondheim Art Prize are Aliana Grace Bailey, Amanda Leigh Burnham, Lillian Jacobson, Jacob Mayberry, and Wonchul Ryu.

Each finalists were selected by this year’s panel of accomplished jurors, Jaqueline Cedar, Mike Cloud, and Jennie Goldstein, and their work will be exhibited in the Walters Art Museum April to July 2025.

Finalists’ Exhibition

Over the next few months, finalists will work with Walters curators to select and install pieces for the Finalists’ Exhibition. The opportunity to collaborate with the curatorial staff at a world class museum like the Walters is an invaluable part of being a Sondheim finalist.

“I’m really looking forward to working with our colleagues at the Walters Art Museum to help the five finalists complete their exhibitions by April,” says Lou Joseph, Director of the Baltimore City Arts Council.

During the Finalists’ Exhibition at the Walters, the jurors will meet with each artist for up to 45 minutes in their exhibition space for a final interview.

After the interviews, the jurors will meet and decide the recipient of the $30,000 Sondheim Art Prize. The selected artist will be announced at the award ceremony and recep on hosted by the Walters.

About the 2025 Sondheim Finalists

Aliana Grace Bailey

Aliana Grace Bailey (she/her) is an interdisciplinary fiber ar st, designer, care worker, and founder of vibrant grace studio. She was born and raised in Washington, D.C., and lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.

Aliana weaves layers of interconnection, comfort, healing, and storytelling through fiber. Aliana’s work embraces the vulnerability of artmaking to build in macy, preserve memories, heal wounds, and create inner peace.

Her work is large in scale, emotional, and vibrant in color, encompassing the body and providing viewers with a comforming hug while exploring familial connections, materials, and experiences that tug at our hearts.

Amanda Leigh Burnham

Amanda Leigh Burnham (she/her) makes drawings of all kinds: artist books, comics, inmate observational drawings, dimensional collages, and large, site-specific installations which feel somewhere between a comic book and a stage set.

A six-time Sondheim semifinalist, four-time MSAC Independent Artist Award winner, and Rubys Grantee, Burnham’s work has been shown internationally; selected venues include the Berman Museum, American University Art Museum, the Delaware Contemporary, and the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art. Since graduating from the Yale School of Art (MFA ’07) she has been a professor of art at Towson University.

Lillian Jacobson

Lillian Jacobson (she/her) is a Baltimore-based La né artist from Bogotá, Colombia, who defines “belonging” through figurative painting. Adopted into a white American family, Lillian has always been a uned to how she is seen by others, which informs her empathetic approach to portraiture.

Lillian holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has exhibited in group shows across the region, including the Maryland Art Place, Chesapeake Arts Center, Bowie City Hall, Maryland Federation of Art, and the Delaplaine Arts Center, where she won the People’s Choice Award for the 2024 exhibition, Emerging Perspectives.

Jacob Mayberry

Jacob Mayberry (he/him) aka Black Chakra is a world traveled spoken word artist and poetry champion. In Baltimore he has cultivated his legacy by teaching youth how to find the power in their voices through poetry. He has coached eight statewide youth poetry champions and three international youth poetry finalist teams. He hopes to one day be remembered as an artist who changed the climate of Baltimore through his work.

Wonchul Ryu

Wonchul Ryu (he/him) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Seoul, Korea, and Baltimore, Maryland. He is currently pursuing his BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore and expects to graduate in spring 2025. Ryu participated in the Yale Norfolk School of Art residency program in 2024, and has exhibited in group shows such as, Exchange (Maryland Art Place, 2024), and Beyond Borders (The Bridge Arts Foundation, LA, 2023). In 2021 Ryu had a solo show, 우린 나쁜 꿈 속에 있었지. (We Were in The Bad Dreams.) at 양천리 갤러리 (Yangcheonri Gallery) (Seoul, Korea, 2021).

About the Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize

The inaugural Prize was awarded at Artscape in 2005 and was known as the Janet & Walter Artscape Prize until 2020, when Artscape was cancelled but the competion continued.

The Prize is named in honor of Janet & Walter Sondheim, both of whom were instrumental in furthering arts and culture in Baltimore City.

Learn more about the Sondheim Art Prize and the 2025 finalists by visiting promotionandarts.org/janetwalter-sondheim-art-prize/ and following BOPA on social media (@promoandarts).