Welcome, Baltimore-Area Artists!
THE BAKER ARTIST PORTFOLIOS AT A GLANCE
The Baker Artist Portfolios provides a free, online portfolio website for artists to showcase their work. It is open to artists working in all disciplines who live in Baltimore City, Maryland or one of its five surrounding counties — Anne Arundel County, Baltimore County, Carroll County, Harford County, and Howard County.
Artists with portfolios are automatically eligible to receive one of the six annual Baker Artist Awards, totaling $90,000 in monetary prizes.
The Baker Artist Portfolios and the Baker Artist Awards were established by the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund and are administered by Creative Alliance. MISSION & HISTORY->
Deadline for 2027 Baker Artist Awards: Friday, January 29, 2027 at 5:00pm
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Be sure to read through the following sections before starting your portfolio!
Click on the + next to the title to expand each section.
- ABOUT THE BAKER ARTIST AWARDS
All artists who have an active Baker Artist Portfolio at each year's deadline will be considered for one of six Baker Artist Awards, recognition that comes with significant monetary prizes, showcase and exhibition opportunities at major Baltimore institutions, and promotional support.
The Baker Artist Awards recognize artists who demonstrate excellence in three areas:
1) Mastery of Craft
2) Depth of Artistic Exploration
3) Unique VisionAwardees are selected through a two-tiered juried process.
Five artists will receive the $10,000 Mary Sawyers Baker Prize. One artist will be selected to receive the $40,000 Mary Sawyers Imboden prize.
In 2027, one artist will be awarded in each of the six artistic disciplines:
• Visual Arts - 2D
• Visual Arts - 3D
• Film & Photography
• Interdisciplinary
• Literary Arts
• Performing Arts
Along with cash awards, selected awardees in the Visual Arts and Interdisciplinary categories are invited to participate in a bi-annual exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art.Click here to meet some of the past Baker Artist Awardees and view their portfolios!
The Deadline for the 2027 Baker Artist Awards is Friday, January 29, 2027 at 5:00pm.
- ELIGIBILITY
To create a Baker Artist Portfolio or be eligible for a Baker Artist Award, artists must:
• be least 21 years old
• have have been a legal resident of the Baltimore region since October 1, 2026 (one year prior to the opening of the current award season). The Baltimore region is defined as: Anne Arundel County, Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Carroll County, Harford County and Howard County.
• maintain an active Baker Artist Portfolio that includes a minimum of one “work sample” and one “project.”
• reactivate their portfolio each year to confirm eligiblity. (For the 2027 Awards, this means logging in between October 1, 2026 and 5pm on January 29, 2027.)
Additional Award Eligibility Information:
The Baker Artist Portfolios and associated awards are intended for individual artists and groups of artists working as a collective. Artists whose work is created in collaboration with another artist and who have no significant body of solo work or work created through other collaborations, should proceed as a collective, creating and maintaining one portfolio for their collaborative work. Artists working in any discipline or multiple disciplines are eligible to be awarded the Mary Sawyers Imboden Prize and the Mary Sawyers Baker prize.
Previous awardees receiving $20,000 or less remain eligible to receive an additional award after the completion of one additional awards cycle.
Staff and board members of the Creative Alliance, the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund, and the Baltimore Community Foundation, as well as their immediate family, are not eligible to receive and award, but are welcome and encouraged to create and maintain a portfolio.- ARTISTIC DISCIPLINES
Artistic Disciplines for 2026/2027
- Visual Art - 2D (e.g. painting, drawing, printmaking)
- Visual Art - 3D (e.g. sculpture, ceramics, jewelry, textile)
- Film & Photography (including video, animation, projection, digital art)
- Performing Arts (including music, dance, theatre, and performance)
- Literary Arts (including fiction, non-fiction, poetry)
- Interdisciplinary Art* (including installation art, multi-media art )
The above examples of work in each discipline are not exhaustive or strictly prescriptive. You are welcome to include work of many disciplines within your portfolio, and the platform enables you to designate individual projects to different disciplines; however, you must select a primary discipline for your portfolio.
If you aren't sure what to select, consider that, in the first round of adjudication, a specialist in each discipline will review submissions. Select the discipline that best aligns with the type of expert you want assessing your work. If you have a question about where your work best fits, please email [email protected].
*Please note that for our definition of Interdisciplinary Art, we are referring to individual works that combine elements from multiple different disciplines. i.e., a video installation using projected media and sound clips. If you make individual works in a variety of different disciplines, please select a primary discipline for your portfolio.
- AWARDS ADJUDICATION
The Baker Artist Awards enlists a two-round juried process. Scoring across both rounds is based on three criteria--Mastery of Craft, Depth of Artistic Exploration, and Unique Vision.
First Round
In the first round of ajudication, portfolios in each discipline are reviewed by 2-3 local or regional experts in that discipline. Round 1 Jurors review a minimum of the 4 work samples in each portfolio. Each juror submits a scoring and ranking of their top selected artists. From these numbers, Baker Artist Award Finalists are determined. Round 1 Jurors are anonymous to each other and the public.
Second RoundIn the second round, one national expert in each discipline thoroughly reviews the portfolios of each of the 36 finalists. Each juror submits a scoring and ranking of their top selected artists. Awardees are determined from the scores and rankings across both tiers of adjudication. The names of Round 2 Jurors are announced at the same time as the Awardees.
- STARTING YOUR PORTFOLIO
Head to the Directory For Artists for additional information and to LEARN MORE->
Before building your portfolio for the first time, we encourage you to attend a Baker Artist Info Session or watch the recording and explore the available resource GUIDES & VIDEOS->
Ready to start now?
To create your Artist Account and get started on your portfolio, click GET STARTED->
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