Amabile Choir to Perform Two Shows Featuring Songs of Love, Loss & Connection. Applications Now Available For BIMA’s BRAVDA Awards

The Bainbridge Island Museum of Art (BIMA) is excited to announce that applications are now open for the 2026 BRAVA Awards (BIMA Recognizes Achievement in the Visual Arts). The Awards honor outstanding contemporary artists, craftspeople, and makers across four disciplines with $15,000 of unrestricted funding, promotional videos, publicity, and recognition at an award ceremony. The award program will honor artists in four categories: Emerging Artist, Native American & First Nations Artist, Artists’ Books Artists, and Ceramics Artist.

The BRAVA Awards are BIMA’s flagship award program. Inspired by the vision and values of BIMA founder Cynthia Sears, the Awards seek to provide significant and direct support to make a meaningful impact in artists’ lives. Thanks to the generosity of a special donor, the Awards have been expanded to be an annual program, allowing even more artists to receive recognition and material support.

“Like many facets of BIMA, the BRAVA Awards can seem like a surprising program to come from a museum. But from our end, it makes perfect sense to look for unusual ways to help artists directly at various points along their journey. These Awards are one more way we can demonstrate our appreciation to the artists who enrich our world,” said BIMA Executive Director Sheila Hughes. “In the words of one of our inspiring, inaugural BRAVA winners, Suquamish elder and master weaver Betty Pasco, ‘Artists are endowed special gifts that can see beauty in a mud puddle and see the dew on the cedar branches outside my window, or music that stirs emotions in you to bring tears to your eyes.’ The BRAVA Awards support these very artists who inspire us every day–artists, we like to believe, that are within us all.”

Awardees demonstrate artistic excellence, technical mastery, and significant contribution to the arts. To ensure a rigorous and equitable selection process, awardees are selected by an independent jury committee of working artists, educators, and leaders in the arts sector. Previous awardees include Sarah Bryant, Dan Friday, Yolanda Galery, and Nikki McClure in 2025, and Kamari Bright, Julie Chen, Julie Paschkis, and Betty Pasco in 2023.