Thea Canlas Wins Baltimore’s 2026 Sondheim Art Prize

Thea Canlas stands inside a gallery with her textile-based work behind her.

Thea Canlas wins the 2026 Sondheim Art Prize after Thursday night’s ceremony at the Walters Art Museum, earning the $30,000 fellowship at the center of Baltimore’s most prominent annual visual-art competition. The result moves the story from a five-artist finalist exhibition to a major investment in one working artist’s next chapter.

Canlas is a Filipina American artist whose practice examines diasporic Philippine identity through material history, craft, sculpture and installation. Her gallery work places personal and cultural memory inside objects that can be read both for their physical construction and for the histories they carry.

Her Baltimore connection runs through the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fibers in 2006—the first year the Sondheim prize was awarded. She later completed a Master of Fine Arts at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver in 2023.

The award does not erase the strength of the full finalist class. Leigh Davis, Brandon Donahue-Shipp, Curran Hatleberg and Danni O’Brien each receive a $3,000 finalist award, and all five artists remain on view at the Walters through September 13. That exhibition keeps the jury’s decision available for public consideration rather than reducing the program to one announcement.

Presented by Create Baltimore in partnership with the Walters and supported by the Maryland State Arts Council, the Sondheim prize is designed to create time and capacity for an artist positioned to make a significant leap. Canlas now joins a lineage of Baltimore-region recipients whose awards became both recognition and working capital.

PowerPage’s preview of the 2026 Sondheim Art Prize ceremony introduced the finalists and the stakes before the decision. The verified result is the material update: Canlas leaves the ceremony with the fellowship, while Baltimore keeps several more weeks to experience the work that earned it.