This week’s news includes: Thea Canlas wins 2026 Sondheim Prize, BmoreArt’s Raquel Castedo wins AIGA book design award, Stevie Walker-Webb stays centered in Baltimore, Lawrence Burney announced as One Maryland One Book winner, The Royal Blue appeals to all, a new state park preserves Maryland’s Black history, Turnstile releases new album, Morton Street Dance Center gets a new home, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle discuss Sinclair Broadcast Group, the legacy of Alex Haley’s ‘Roots,’ DC art world 25 years after 9/11, Dr. Maggie M. Cao wins SAAM’s Charles C. Eldredge Prize, Isonah Ngouabe Dlodlo and Jaylen Daley seek to create community space in West Baltimore, and a Subscape photo essay.
Thea Canlas, whose art explores Philippine identity, wins 2026 Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize
by Ed Gunts
Published August 28 in Baltimore Fishbowl
Thea Canlas, a Filipina American artist, is the winner of the 21st annual Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize, awarded Thursday night at the Walters Art Museum.
A graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Canlas will receive $30,000. Her work explores “the entanglements of diasporic Philippine identity” through craft and material histories, sculptural objects and installations. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Fibers from MICA in 2006 — the first year the Sondheim prize was awarded — and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver in 2023. In 2024, she was a semifinalist for the Sondheim Art Prize, one of the most prestigious awards given in Maryland. She works as a studio artist, freelance designer and educator.
“This is an incredible honor, a full circle moment for me!” Canlas said. “I’m still absorbing everything. Thankful for this opportunity, as an artist working and living in Baltimore, a great art city. I’m so grateful for the support of my family and friends. Meeting the finalists and exhibiting work alongside my peers added to this extraordinary experience.”
Local designer wins prestigious AIGA 50 Books|50 Covers award for outstanding design of book on Jackie Milad
by Aliza Worthington
Published August 27 in Baltimore Fishbowl
Baltimore-based artist Raquel Castedo has been named a winner of AIGA’s 50 Books|50 Covers of 2025, one of the longest-running and esteemed book design competitions in the United States.
American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) recognized Castedo’s book design for “Shabtis Gather: Jackie Milad” — a publication by Baltimore-based artist Jackie Milad — for outstanding design and the book was added to Columbia University’s permanent collection. Castedo is a Brazilian designer, researcher, and educator who moved to Baltimore to study as a visiting scholar at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).
She is now a creative director for BmoreArt and teaches publication design at MICA. Milad is a Baltimore-based artist who has been in group and solo exhibitions around the world. Local exhibitions appeared at The Walters Art Museum, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Academy Art Museum in Easton, Maryland, and at museums in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
Sought-after artistic director Stevie Walker-Webb is staying at Baltimore Center Stage
by Wesley Case
Published September 2 in The Baltimore Banner
Stevie Walker-Webb, the Tony Award-nominated theater director, has had enticing job offers as of late — to try TV, to make more money, to work internationally.
Walker-Webb, though, is staying put in his adopted home. He’s signed a three-year contract extension to remain artistic director of Baltimore Center Stage. The extension, which began July 1, runs through June 30, 2029.
“I feel like my legacy, my destiny and my heart — it’s all in Baltimore,” Walker-Webb said Wednesday afternoon.
Since his 2023 arrival at Baltimore Center Stage, Walker-Webb has spearheaded eclectic seasons of plays and live performances while attracting Emmy Award-winning talent to Charm City to debut their own new works.
Maryland Humanities Announces 2026 One Maryland One Book Author Events Coming This Fall
Press Release :: September 1
Maryland Humanities is thrilled to announce our upcoming fall events with 2026 One Maryland One Book (OMOB) author, Lawrence Burney, where we’ll convene with readers from across Maryland to discuss this year’s OMOB selection, No Sense in Wishing: Essays on Black Music, Belonging, and Baltimore.
Released in 2025 by Simon and Schuster, the book is a personal and analytical essay collection taking cue from Burney’s career as a culture writer and critic through which he looks at his home city of Baltimore, music from throughout the global Black diaspora, and the traditions that raised him, offering perspective on the people, places, music, and art that transformed him.
The Dish: How The Royal Blue became all things to all people
by Christina Tkacik
Published September 2 in The Baltimore Banner
The bathroom at The Royal Blue is a constant battleground: No sooner do the owners of the Station North bar and restaurant repaint the pale pink bathroom than someone tags it again with graffiti, scribbling a few symbols in white paint above the hand dryer.
Co-owner Randy Coffren said he and his business partners have considered just leaving the scrawl but decided against it for fear of alienating elderly customers who come in for a meal.
After all, The Royal Blue, which opened nearly four years ago, has found success in Baltimore by opening its doors to everyone, every day of the week.
Maryland plantation-turned-state park aims to stop the ‘erosion’ of Black history
by Shayla Colon
Published August 31 in The Baltimore Banner
For years, Emmett Dashiell felt he didn’t know his history. The 73-year-old, who grew up on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, said his ancestry was shrouded in mystery.
That was until earlier this year, when the Maryland Park Service invited him to revisit the farmland he grew up near. He discovered he’s likely a descendant of people who were enslaved on a sprawling plantation along Wetipquin Creek.
Now, the plantation house and more than 400 acres around it will soon become Wetipquin Creek State Park, the first state park in Wicomico County, after the Maryland Department of Natural Resources bought it for $3.3 million earlier this year. Its addition means that every county in the state has at least one state park.
Turnstile’s new album brings Elton John — and Baltimore — along for the ride
by Wesley Case
Published August 28 in The Baltimore Banner
We woke up this morning in a world where Elton John can be heard passionately belting the lyrics of a Baltimore hard rock band.
“You left me folded in the dark,” he sings on “Seein’ Stars,” the 79-year-old pop maestro’s reimagined take on the Turnstile single.
On Friday, Turnstile, Baltimore’s biggest band of the moment, released “Never Enough: Versions,” a star-studded reinterpretation of their breakthrough album, “Never Enough.” Released in June 2025, the record earned the quintet’s first Grammy Awards in February.
“Never Enough: Versions” spans generations and genres, boasting features from John, Hayley Williams (“Ceiling”), Slayyyter (“Birds”) and other big-name collaborators.
Morton Street Dance Center celebrates move to Hampden with ribbon-cutting Thursday
by Ed Gunts
Published August 31 in Baltimore Fishbowl
The Morton Street Dance Center, home of the Full Circle Dance Company, has a new home at 1001 Rectory Lane in Hampden.
Maryland Governor Wes Moore and First Lady Dawn Moore are among the dignitaries expected to attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark the opening of the dance center’s new location on Thursday, Sept. 3, starting at 11 a.m.
Founded in 1992, Morton Street Dance Center is a school that offers dance education and training for students ranging from toddlers to adults. Students learn classical ballet, pointe, pre-pointe, modern, jazz, tap, hip-hop, and African dance. Programs range from creative movement and “pre-dance” classes for children to technical training and drop-in classes for adults.
Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle panel scrutinizes Sinclair’s influence on Baltimore politics
by Megan Sayles
Published August 20 in The AFRO
Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS), a Baltimore-based grassroots think tank, hosted a virtual panel raising concerns about the impact of Sinclair Broadcast Group on the city’s political landscape on Aug. 6.
The panel comes amid a continued debate over the influence of Sinclair Chairman David D. Smith in Baltimore’s media landscape. Smith, who has led the company for decades, personally purchased The Baltimore Sun alongside political commentator Armstrong Williams in 2024. Sinclair owns Baltimore television station Fox 45.
During the conversation, panelists criticized Sinclair’s coverage of Baltimore, arguing that it contributes to negative perceptions of the city, Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools) and Black youth while advancing a broader political agenda around public safety and criminal justice.
Fifty Years Later, Alex Haley’s ‘Roots’ Maintains its Historical and Sociological Force
by Ron Cassie
Published August 31 in Baltimore Magazine
When Alex Haley’s novel, Roots: The Saga of an American Family, was published in the fall of 1976—in the midst of America’s Bicentennial, no less—it became an overnight commercial and critical success. The book spent 22 weeks at No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list, earned Haley special citations from both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and was translated into 37 languages.
Fifty years later, whether you’re reading it or are listening in audiobook form, Roots maintains its historical and sociological force—as well the narrative pace of good fiction and the detail and vividness of cinema.
In January 1977, the miniseries based on the book became the most-watched television show ever, transforming the way Americans—Black and white—thought about slavery, family history, and the nation’s past. (Ironically, the previous record holder for largest television show audience had been the two-part airing of Gone with the Wind, just months earlier.)
25 Years After September 11: Remembering a Changing DC Art World
by Michael Janis
Published September 1 in East City Art
On the morning of September 11, 2001, Washington’s art world was preparing for another fall exhibition season. Galleries were hanging shows, artists were preparing openings and collectors were making plans. By the end of the day, the city had changed.
Twenty-five years later, the effects of September 11 on Washington’s arts community are harder to define. For some, the most lasting changes were physical and psychological. Public space became more controlled, security became part of the daily landscape, and the gallery business entered a period of major change. For others, however, the creative community was already moving in a different direction. September 11 was an event they experienced, but not necessarily the event that changed what they were doing.
F. Lennox “Lenny” Campello was then co-owner of the Fraser Gallery in Georgetown and a longtime artist, curator and critic. A former naval intelligence officer, Campello had been deeply involved in Washington’s art scene for years and is now co-founder and partner of Alida Anderson Art Projects.
On September 11, Campello was driving to National Airport to pick up his mother, whose flight from Miami was turned around.
Maggie M. Cao Wins the 2026 Charles C. Eldredge Prize
Press Release :: September 2
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is delighted to announce that Dr. Maggie M. Cao, professor of art history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill has been awarded the Charles C. Eldredge Prize for her book Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies (University of Chicago Press, 2025).
The annual Eldredge Prize, named in honor of the museum’s former director (1982–1988), recognizes originality and thoroughness of research, excellence of writing, and clarity of method. Single-author, book-length publications in the field of American art history appearing within the previous three calendar years are eligible. This year’s jurors were Amy M. Mooney of Columbia College Chicago, Richard Meyer of Stanford University, and Megan A. Smetzer of Capilano University.
The jury described Painting US Empire as a “capacious and elegantly written study of how nineteenth-century American art gave visual form to the logics of the U.S. empire, and of how those logics continue to shape artistic practice today.” They note that the book “offers an antidote to American exceptionalism, breaking down the borders that have too often confined American art history to a national frame,” and that it helps “readers understand the present-day realities of U.S. imperialism through their nineteenth-century visual roots.” The jurors commend Dr. Cao’s writing as a “rare combination of sophistication and clarity, drawing together disparate materials and moments into an argument that feels both rigorous and alive,” and praise her methods as she “moves fluidly between the nineteenth century and the recent past, tracing how an idea travels across time without flattening the specificity of either moment.” The trio found the book timely and relevant “for institutions grappling with how to reinstall and reinterpret American art collections for contemporary audiences.” The jury concluded that “Cao models what it means to study American art as a history that is anchored in the United States while always moving, intentionally, outward.”
Shortlisted for the 2026 prize were: Jennifer Sichel, Criticism Without Authority: Gene Swenson’s and Jill Johnston’s Queer Practices (University of Chicago Press, 2025) and Amanda Cachia, Hospital Aesthetics: Disability, Medicine, Activism (Manchester University Press, 2025).
In conjunction with the award, Cao will present the Eldredge Prize Lecture on Wednesday, March 10, 2027.
2 college students — and a growing fan club — are reinvigorating a West Baltimore shed
by Jasmine Vaughn-Hall
Published August 28 in The Baltimore Banner
The gray, half-block-long shed along a passageway prone to litter and dumping in the 1400 block of West Baltimore Street is easy to overlook.
It’s boarded up and covered with graffiti. It’s also becoming a neighborhood destination.
Isonah Ngouabe Dlodlo and Jaylen Daley, who grew up and live nearby but attend out-of-state colleges, are working to transform the vacant building into a community space. What started as a summer internship assignment turned into a passion project — and now, as they return to college, a community effort.
A TikTok video they made to promote the project was viewed over 25,000 times and flooded with supportive comments.
POV: In the Crowd at Subscape, Baltimore’s DIY Music Fest
by Josh Sisk
Published September 1 in Baltimore Magazine
This past weekend, fans of Baltimore’s boisterous underground music scene bounced back and forth between neighboring North Howard Street venues Le Mondo and Current Space for Subscape—the city’s ever-evolving DIY music fest that features a lineup of more than 60 area punk, alternative, and metal bands across three days.
Though the shows are all free to attend, in keeping with the event’s DIY spirit, organizers turned to crowdfunding (with rewards like VIP perks and locally designed merch) to make sure all talent got paid and production costs were covered. They raised more than double their goal.
“Our city has one of the best music scenes on the planet, and it deserves to be championed by everyone who lives here,” organizers Michael Habif of Baltimore Showplace, Andy Phillips of Wax Atlas, and Kim Te of the band Natural Velvet, wrote on their Indiegogo page. “In a time when it’s harder than ever to find community in the non-virtual world, the DIY music scene is a refuge for countless people to connect and support each other. ”
Become a Member
Artist Memberships Include 2 Tickets to Each Magazine Release Party!
