This week’s news includes: Brandon Weinbrenner named Artistic Director at Everyman Theatre, three Baltimore artists featured in NPG exhibition, Joyce J. Scott honored by BCPSS, Amy Sherald exhibition breaks records at BMA, Sinners’ hairstylist Tené Wilder nominate for multiple awards, Opera Baltimore’s “Root and Renaissance,” Lena Waithe comes to BCS, HBCU Week NOW Student Film Festival, and protecting murals in DC.
Everyman Theatre names Brandon Weinbrenner as its next Artistic Director
Press Release :: January 28
The Board of Directors at Everyman Theatre in Baltimore, Md. has named Houston-based director, producer, and current associate artistic director at Alley Theatre, Brandon Weinbrenner, as its next Artistic Director. Weinbrenner will relocate to Baltimore and assume the role beginning in July 2026.
The selection of Weinbrenner follows an extensive, nationwide search by Everyman’s Board of Directors to find a successor for Everyman’s founding artistic director, Vincent M. Lancisi, who will retire in June. The executive search committee, in consultation with employees of the theatre and members of its resident company, and with assistance of Management Consultants for the Arts (MCA), engaged in an inclusive six-month-long process where they evaluated a broad slate of candidates to identify an artistic leader who would maintain Everyman’s core values of people, community, and excellence, while also upholding the theatre’s reputation of delivering professional theatre of the highest artistic standards with a Resident Company of artists.
“We are fortunate to have found an exciting and vibrant artistic director who shares our cultural and artistic values and also has deep experience working with resident actors and artisans,” says Bryan Rakes, President of Everyman Theatre’s Board of Directors. “Everyman’s Resident Company is central to our mission, and we’re excited to see it flourish under Brandon’s leadership.” […]
National Portrait Gallery Announces Winners of the Seventh Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition and Opening of “The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today”
Press Release :: January 23
Three Baltimore artists featured in the exhibition
Joseph Mario Giordano
LaToya Hobbs
Katie O’Keefe
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery has announced Brooklyn-based artist Kameron Neal as the first-prize winner of the seventh national Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. Neal’s two-channel video installation “Down the Barrel (of a Lens)” (2023) draws upon his time as a public artist in residence at New York City’s Department of Records, and it places the audience between two screens of declassified New York Police Department surveillance footage filmed between 1960 and 1980. As the first-prize winner, Neal will receive $25,000 and a commission to create a portrait of a living individual for the museum’s permanent collection. “Down the Barrel (of a Lens)” will be on view as part of “The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today” exhibition, co-curated by the competition’s director Taína Caragol, the Portrait Gallery’s senior curator of painting and sculpture, and Charlotte Ickes, the Portrait Gallery’s curator of time-based media art and special projects.
Held every three years, the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition is dedicated to supporting the next wave of contemporary portraiture in the U.S. “The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today” will be on view at the museum Jan. 24 through Aug. 30. From the exhibition’s opening through April 5, visitors—in person and online—can vote for their favorite artwork to receive the People’s Choice Award.
Baltimore City Schools Dedicates New First-Floor Gallery Walk in Honor of Joyce J. Scott
Baltimore City Schools Facebook Page :: January 19
Baltimore City Schools gathered at Central Office for a dedication ceremony honoring the extraordinary legacy of Ms. Joyce J. Scott, a City Schools alum as well as a renowned Baltimore artist, educator, and cultural leader.
The event celebrated the naming of the Central Office’s first-floor Gallery Walk in her honor, recognizing her lasting impact on arts, culture, education, and the Baltimore community. Students from Connexions and Booker T. Washington performed during the ceremony.
Baltimore Museum of Art sets attendance record with its current exhibition, ‘Amy Sherald: American Sublime’
by Ed Gunts
Published January 26 in Baltimore Fishbowl
The Baltimore Museum of Art has set an attendance record with its current exhibition: Amy Sherald: American Sublime.
As of Jan. 20, 52,597 people have seen the exhibition or purchased tickets since it opened on Nov. 2 for a five-month run that will end on April 5.
Before the exhibit opened, BMA officials said the exhibit that drew the highest attendance there was the Matisse/Diebenkorn show in 2016 and 2017, which had about 45,700 visitors. The show with the second highest attendance was The Culture: Hip Hop & Contemporary Art in the 21st Century, with about 30,000 visitors in 2023.
Baltimore Native Tené Wilder Earns Academy Award®, Guild, and NAACP Image Award Nominations for Sinners
Press Release :: January 27
Tené Wilder, the Baltimore-born and -raised Emmy Award–winning hairstylist and creative visionary, continues to receive national acclaim as Ryan Coogler’s acclaimed film Sinners advances through an extraordinary awards season. Wilder has earned a 2026 Academy Award® nomination for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, recognizing her role as a key hairstylist on the film and her contribution to its richly textured, character-driven visual storytelling. The 98th Academy Awards® will take place on Sunday, March 15, 2026, at 7:00 PM ET / 4:00 PM PT.
In addition to the Oscar® nomination, Wilder has been nominated for the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards for Best Period and/or Character Hair Styling, which will air on Sunday, March 1, 2026, at 8:00 PM ET / 5:00 PM PT. She has also been nominated for the 57th NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Hair Styling (TV or Film), airing Saturday, February 28, 2026, at 8:00 PM ET / 5:00 PM PT.
Wilder’s work on Sinners is defined by emotional precision, historical grounding, and cultural authenticity. She curated powerful, period-specific hairstyles for actors Wunmi Mosaku (Annie), Li Jun Li (Grace Chow), and Lola Kirke (Joan), using hair as a narrative device to deepen character development and anchor performances in lived experience. Her artistry helped propel Sinners into the highest tiers of award recognition, affirming her reputation as a master storyteller through hair.
“I’ve been overwhelmed—in the most humbling way—by the response to this work,” said Wilder. “To be recognized by the Academy, the Guild, and the NAACP is something I don’t take lightly. I’m deeply grateful to the Sinners team, to the artists and performers who trusted me with their characters, and to the community that has supported me every step of the way. This moment is bigger than me—it’s about collaboration, culture, and honoring the stories we’re entrusted to tell.”
Her transformative work on FX’s Pose earned her a 2021 Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Contemporary Hairstyling. She has continued to build an extraordinary portfolio in which her attention to character, culture, and emotional depth shines. Her work is currently featured in The Dutchman and Netflix’s His & Hers miniseries.
Together, these accolades and nominations—from the Academy, the Guild, and the NAACP—underscore Wilder’s extraordinary impact on film and television. Rooted in Baltimore and resonant on the global stage, her work continues to bridge beauty, culture, and storytelling at the highest levels of the industry.
‘Roots and Resonance’ weaves opera, Black history, and Jewish history into a Baltimore love letter at Reginald F. Lewis Museum
by Aliza Worthington
Published January 23 in Hyperallergic
Opera Baltimore and the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture present “Roots and Resonance: An Operatic Love Letter to Baltimore” on Saturday, Feb. 14, but this is not your typical romance story.
“Roots and Resonance” is the kick-off event for an initiative highlighting the long and deeply-intertwined histories of Baltimore’s Black and Jewish communities, in partnership with the Reginald F. Lewis Museum and the Jewish Museum of Maryland. The initiative, “Voices in Solidarity: Baltimore’s Black and Jewish Operatic History,” spotlights the enmeshed and longstanding community ties through music, conversation, and education.
Emmy Winner Lena Waithe on the Excitement and Vulnerability of Her Theatrical Debut
by Kerry Folan |
Published January 28 in Baltimore Magazine
Baltimore Center Stage’s Stevie Walker-Webb is making it his mission to turn Baltimore into an incubator for world-premier theater. Last season, in his first full year as artistic director, he programmed two hugely successful productions: Matthew Weiner’s John Wilkes Booth: One Night Only and Jordan E. Cooper’s Oh Happy Day, which went on to a successful run at New York’s Public Theater in 2025.
Continuing that momentum, this season, Walker-Webb brings longtime friend Lena Waithe—the Hollywood showrunner (The Chi), producer (Dear White People), writer (Master of None), and actor (Westworld), perhaps best known for being the first Black woman to win an Emmy for comedy writing—to Baltimore for her theatrical debut.
10 films selected for inaugural HBCU Week NOW Film Festival
Special Press Release
Published January 26 in The Afro
Ten award-winning films by students and recent graduates of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) will premiere on Jan. 27 as part of the inaugural HBCU Week NOW Student Film Festival.
The winning shorts will stream on the HBCU Week NOW YouTube channel. They were selected from a pool of 36 submissions from across the nation. Each winning project receives a $5,000 award and inclusion in the festival produced by HBCU Week NOW, a public media partnership spearheaded by Maryland Public Television (MPT), and Black Public Media (BPM), the Harlem-based national media arts nonprofit.
Activists Fight to Salvage the “Sistine Chapel of New Deal Art”
by Aaron Short
Published January 19 in Hyperallergic
A group of artists, preservationists, and activists is sounding the alarm against Trump’s potential demolition of a prominent federal office building next to the National Mall, and the treasured artworks inside it — including several New Deal-era murals that speak to the value of Social Security in the United States.
Alex Lawson, executive director of the advocacy organization Social Security Works, co-authored a petition to save the works with local muralist Absurdly Well. Released earlier this week, the missive demands that the Trump administration cease its plans to sell the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, described in the petition as the “Sistine Chapel of New Deal art.”
In an interview with Hyperallergic, Lawson called Trump’s proposed transaction “authoritarianism 101.”
Become a Member
Print Journals, Invitations, and Newsletter – Oh My!
