BALTIMORE--The Baltimore Museum of Art celebrates the 10 inaugural winners of the Baker Artist Awards with an exhibition of sculpture, photography, drawings, and multimedia presentations displayed in three galleries of the Museum's West Wing of Contemporary Art. On view April 29 through June 28, Baker Artist Awards 2009 features 28 works of art from six visual artists and video footage of four music or dance performance artists.

Hadieh Shafie director of the Joseph Meyerhoff Center for Career Development at MICA, sculptor John Ruppert, and jazz musician Carl Grubbs each received a $25,000 Mary Sawyers Baker Prize determined by a multidiscipline jury. Highlights of their work on view at the BMA include six paintings and 12 works on paper by Shafie, a dramatic display of five sculptures by Ruppert, and a DVD of Grubbs in performance. These works are presented along with visual art and performance examples by Baltimore's Choice award winners Becky Alprin (MFA '08), Milana Braslavsky (BFA '05), Sarah House, Adam Hopkins, Rob Levit, Jim Lucio, and Vincent E. Thomas, each of whom was selected by popular vote to receive $1,000.

General admission to the BMA is free; special exhibitions may be ticketed. The BMA is open Wednesday through Friday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. (except major holidays). The museum is closed Monday, Tuesday, New Year's Day, July 4, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. The BMA is located on Art Museum Drive at North Charles and 31st streets, three miles north of Baltimore's Inner Harbor. For general museum information, call 443-573-1700 or visit the BMA's Web site.

Caption information: Hadieh Shafie, Overlap, ink on paper on board, 2008.

 

Founded in 1826, MICA is among the top visual arts colleges in the nation. It enrolls 1,714 undergraduate and 218 graduate students from 48 states and 52 foreign countries, offering programs of study leading to the bachelor of fine arts (B.F.A.), master of arts (M.A.), and master of fine arts (M.F.A.) degrees. It also offers post-baccalaureate certificate programs and a full slate of credit and noncredit courses for adults, college-bound students, and children. MICA is recognized as an important cultural resource for the Baltimore/Washington region, sponsoring many public and community-outreach programs-including more than 100 exhibitions by students, faculty, and nationally and internationally known artists annually-as well as artists' residencies, film series, lectures, readings, and performances.

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