BALTIMORE, MD.- Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts are proud to announce that Ryan Hackett is the winner of the 2010 Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize. The coveted $25,000 prize was presented at this evening’s awards ceremony at The Baltimore Museum of Art. Works of art by the prizewinner and six other finalists are on view at the BMA until August 1. “There comes a certain point in your life when it is hard to keep going, but sometimes things happen,” said Hackett. “There are a lot of things that I’d like to do and couldn’t afford. This prize makes them possible.” Hackett received his Bachelor of Arts in 1999 in studio art from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a Master of Fine Arts from San Francisco Art Institute in 2007. In between his academic pursuits, he co-founded Decatur Blue, a Washington, D.C.-based artist collective that l