Of course, the application is now only two weeks aaway – December 7, 2007.
This seems a reasonable amount of time to put together five jpegs and fill out an application and write a check for twenty-five bucks. One welcome change is that this year each of the approximately six finalists will get a $1500 honorarium. This is definitely a good move, since it often takes that amount of money to frame, ship, and display work in an exhibit that is put together in about three weeks.
The text below is from the BOPA website. Check out the three jurors and let me know who you think will be this year’s pick. It seems there will be an emphasis on “new media” or “time-based work” and also an emphasis on diversity.
“Artscape, the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts (BOPA), The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) and the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) are proud to announce the third edition of the Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize. The prize will award a $25,000 fellowship to a visual artist or visual artist collaborators working in the Baltimore region. The prize is in conjunction with the annual Artscape juried exhibition. Approximately six finalists will be selected for the final review for the prize. Their work will be shown in the Thalheimer Gallery of The Baltimore Museum of Art. Additionally, an exhibition of the semi-finalists will be shown in the Decker and Meyerhoff galleries of the Maryland Institute College of Art during the Artscape weekend.”
Jurors
Laura Hoptman is the Senior Curator at the New Museum in New York, an institution dedicated to the exhibition of new and under-recognized contemporary artists. She is among the team of curators of the inaugural show of this museum’s new building, Unmonumental, which opens December 1, 2007. Ms. Hoptman has organized numerous other highly respected exhibitions, including the 2004 Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958-1968 at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and Drawing Now: Eight Propositions at MOMA, Queens. Along with being an accomplished curator whose career spans more than 20 years, she has written several works accompanying her many exhibitions as well as articles for Parkett, Flash Art and other journals.
Mickalene Thomas is a New York-based artist working in the mediums of painting, drawing and photography. Undeniably influenced by her 70’s childhood and the advertised, urban black identity, she quietly explores her own self-image as she presents the feminine, sensual and powerful black woman. Her work has been widely exhibited in spaces such as the Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago; New York’s P.S.1/MOMA, The Proposition gallery, The Studio Museum in Harlem and Exit Art; and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Numerous publications have also featured reviews of her work, including the New York Times, Artforum and Art in America. In 2002-2003, she participated in the prestigious Artist-in-Residence program at The Studio Museum in Harlem and is currently working with Cereal Art to create two new artist’s multiples.
Darby English is an art historian specializing in postwar and contemporary American art, cultural studies, art theory and criticism. Along with teaching in the Art History Department at the University of Chicago, he has written and edited many essays and books. Among his most recent publications is the critically acclaimed How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness, and Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress – the accompanying catalog to the exhibition of the same name that Dr. English co-curated. In 2006 he was awarded a Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Fellowship, an esteemed program that functions as an international center for research and discussion in the fields of art and art history.
