For 2014, 38 individual artists and one artist duo have been selected as semifinalists. Congratulations, and good luck with the next round!

Lauren Adams, Baltimore, MD
Kyle Bauer, Baltimore, MD
Stephanie Benassi, Baltimore, MD
Tommy Bobo, Baltimore, MD
Aharon Bumi, Baltimore, MD
Amanda Burnham, Baltimore, MD
Dustin Carlson, Baltimore, MD
Shannon Collis, Baltimore, MD
Jim Condron, Owings Mills, MD
Leah Cooper, Baltimore, MD
Elizabeth Crisman, Baltimore, MD
Marley Dawson, Washington, DC
Adam Farcus, Baltimore, MD
Neil Feather, Baltimore, MD
Terence Hanum, Parkville, MD
Joshua Haycraft, Washington, DC
Nora Howell, Baltimore, MD
Elena Johnston, Baltimore, MD
Benjamin Kelley, Baltimore, MD
Dean Kessmann, Washington, DC
Ru Kuwahata & Max Porter (Tiny Inventions), Baltimore, MD
Christopher LaVoie, Baltimore, MD
Jon Malis, Washington, DC
Sebastian Martorana, Baltimore, MD
Cara Ober, Baltimore, MD
Ding Ren, Columbia, MD
Fred Scharmen, Baltimore, MD
Paul Shortt, Baltimore, MD
Ally Silberkleit, Baltimore, MD
Nora Sturges, Baltimore, MD
Diane Szczepaniak, Potomac, MD
Kyle Tata, Baltimore, MD
Chad Tyler, Baltimore, MD
Elena Volkova, Baltimore, MD
Stewart Watson, Baltimore, MD
Martine Workman, Washington, DC
Trevor Young, Takoma Park, MD
Lu Zhang, Baltimore, MD
John Zimmerman, Baltimore, MD

JURORS

Claire Gilman is currently the curator at The Drawing Center in New York where she has organized several exhibitions, including: Drawing Time, Reading Time (2013), Dickinson/Walser: Pencil Sketches (2013), Giosetta Fioroni: L’Argento (2013), Alexandre Singh: The Pledge (2013), Ishmael Randall Weeks: Cuts, Burns, Punctures (2013), José Antonio Suarez Londoño: The Yearbooks (2012) and Drawn from Photography (2011). Years prior to her tenure at The Drawing Center, Gilman was the Janice H. Levin Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where she worked on exhibitions such as Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul and Greater New York 2005. Gilman has taught art history and critical theory at Columbia University; The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College; The Corcoran College for Art and Design and the Museum of Modern Art. She has written for Art Journal, CAA Reviews, Documents, Frieze and October and has authored numerous essays for art books and museum exhibitions. She received her PhD in Art History from Columbia University in 2006.

Sarah Oppenheimer is a New York based artist whose art installations commonly pierce the architecture of the institutions hosting her work, creating experimental places that challenge a viewer’s perception of the exhibition space. Her first permanent commission, W-120301, was included in the 2012 renovation of the Contemporary Wing at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Oppenheimer has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at The Drawing Center, New York (2002); Youkobo Art Space, Toyko, Japan (2004); the Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri (2008); Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland (2009); Annely Juda Fine Arts, London, England (2009) and an upcoming exhibition, among several, at Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA (2017). She has been featured in many group exhibitions as well, including Odd Lots, White Columns and the Queens Museum of Art, New York (2005); Inner and Outer Space, The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA (2008); Automatic Cites, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, CA (2009); Factory Direct, The Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA (2012) and the forthcoming Site Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM (2015). Her work has been reviewed dozens of times, including several articles in The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America and the Wall Street Journal. She was awarded a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptuors Grant in 2011, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in 2009 and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2007. She received her MFA from Yale University in 1999, where she is now a visiting critic.

Olivia Shao is an artist and independent curator based in New York. Her artwork has been featured in exhibitions at Real Fine Arts, New York (2010); White Columns, New York (2008); Feigen Contemporary, New York (2005); Clementine Gallery, New York (2005); and 96 Gillespie, London, England (2004). Her curatorial work includes La Poussière de Soleils (The Dust of Suns) at Real Fine Arts, New York (2013); Exquisite Corpse Pose at Elisabeth Ivers Gallery, New York (2011); The Evryali Score at David Zwirner, New York (2010); The Baghdad batteries at MoMA P.S.1, New York (2010) and Doyers Plant Shop at Doyer Space, New York (2009). Shao is a 1998 graduate of the Parsons The New School for Design in New York.

Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize
The Artscape prize is named in honor of Janet and Walter Sondheim who have been instrumental in creating the Baltimore City that exists today. Walter Sondheim, Jr. had been one of Baltimore’s most important civic leaders for over 50 years. His accomplishments included oversight of the desegregation of the Baltimore City Public Schools in 1954 when he was president of the Board of School Commissioners of Baltimore City. Later, he was deeply involved in the development of Charles Center and the Inner Harbor. He continued to be active in civic and educational activities in the city and state and served as the senior advisor to the Greater Baltimore Committee until his death in February 2007.