News

2021 Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize Finalist /  by Aisha White

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2021 Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize Finalist

Congratulations to the five finalists of this year’s competition: Hoesy Corona, Tsedaye Makonnen, Jonathan Monaghan, Lavar Munroe, and Hae Won Sohn.

The prestigious competition awards a $25,000 fellowship to assist in furthering the career of a visual artist or visual artist collaborators living and working in the Greater Baltimore region. This year, the finalists’ work will be exhibited in person at the Walters Art Museum, on view Thursday, May 27, through Sunday, July 18, 2021. The winner of the 2021 Sondheim Artscape Prize will be announced during a special award ceremony on Saturday, July 10, 2021.

Additionally, works by semifinalists not moving to the finals will be selected by BOPA curator Lou Joseph for a separate exhibition during the summer of 2021. The 2021 jurors are Naz Cuguoğlu, Michelle Grabner, and Meleko Mokgosi.

Visit our social media pages to get to know these phenomenal artists and see their work: Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize Finalists
Hoesy Corona (Baltimore, MD)
Tsedaye Makonnen (Washington, DC)
Jonathan Monaghan (Washington, DC)
Lavar Munroe (Baltimore, MD)
Hae Won Sohn (Baltimore, MD)

Music Video Feature: Cecily /  by Aisha White

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Directors - Mignotae Kebede & Mansa Johnson

Director of Photography - Mansa Johnson / @mojo_shoots

Producer - Mignotae Kebede / @migkeb

Editors - Mansa Johnson & Mignotae Kebede

Make Up - Yetunde Oriola / @beatbyye

Featuring - Muhsinah / @MuhsinahTV​

Set Design:

Mirrored Light Sculptures - 'Senait & Nahom: The Peacemaker & The Comforter' by Tsedaye Makonnen Sentinels by Lisa Rosentein of Otis Street Arts Project

Wardrobe: Maria Fenton of House of Emma Effa Oyemwen

Studio: The Dojo Studios

Announcing Clark Art Futures Fellowship /  by Aisha White

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This Fall I am excited to announce that I will join the Clark Art Institute as their inaugural Futures Fellow.

About the Futures Fellowship
This fellowship supports artists, educators, scholars, writers, and art critics who are reimagining the possibilities of museums, scholarship, and public engagement. The program focuses on projects that examine social justice and the arts, reimagine the canon of art history, or consider the role of performance art in exposing erased histories.

Fellowships are awarded every year to established and promising scholars with the aim of fostering a critical commitment to inquiry in the theory, history, and interpretation of art and visual culture. As part of our commitment to fostering diverse engagements with the visual arts, RAP particularly seeks to elevate constituencies, subjects, and methods that have historically been underrepresented in the discipline. These fellowships are intended to nurture a variety of disciplinary approaches and support new voices in art history.

Virtual Tour: I Came by Boat So Meet Me at the Beach /  by Aisha White

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Ayana M. Evans, New York-based performance artist, and Tsedaye Makonnen, multidisciplinary artist from Washington, DC, present new collaborative works and performances that explore the legacies of Black radical womanhood in relationship to well-being, ritual, and physical labor.Organized by Kilolo Luckett, curator of Visual Arts.

August Wilson Center For African-American Culture

01/24/2020 - 03/29/2020

Pre-Order the "Black Women as/and the Living Archive" Publication /  by Aisha White


We are thrilled to announce that the Black Women as/and the Living Archive publication is now available to pre-order. This is part of a larger project of the same name, curated and organized by interdisciplinary artist Tsedaye Makonnen. From May–June 2020, "Black Women as/and the Living Archive" explored the modes in which Black women encode, preserve, and share memory through community. Central to Makonnen's inquiry was Children of NAN: Mothership, a film by artist Alisha Wormsley that functions as a metaphor for the survival and power of Black women in a dystopic future. Many of the cast and collaborators of the film—Li Harris, Autumn Knight, Ingrid LaFleur and Jasmine Hearn—participated in the multi-event project.

The publication, which incorporates both archival and new materials, serves as a repository for the conversations and intimate interactions amongst the participants and the audience. It follows the project from its inception in 2019 (first planned to be an exhibition with screenings and live performances) to its adaptation to virtual formats in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and its presentation during the Black Lives Matter uprisings and the ongoing state sanctioned violence against Black people. Makonnen has organized the publication around four themes: Space, Moving Image, Memory; Collective Memory; Pleasure Memory; and Mama Memory [& Care]. There is newly commissioned writing by Jessica Lanay, Jo Stewart, Ladi’Sasha Jones, and Yona Harvey, documentation of the project’s public programs, as well as an annotated bibliography by Ola Ronke, creator of The Free Black Women's Library. The publication is designed by Rheagen King.

The publication costs $50. 

To make a purchase, complete the form (to the right).

Thank you!