Art for Justice Creates New Program to Bring Artists and Criminal-Justice Advocates Together

A new effort by the Art for Justice Fund will bring award-winning artists, nonprofit leaders, and formerly incarcerated activists together in a pilot program with the goal of changing how people think about the criminal-justice system. The program is one of the innovative new approaches to overhauling the criminal-justice system that banking heiress Agnes Gund has been supporting with a 2017 gift of $100 million from the proceeds of the sale of a Roy Lichtenstein painting.

The program, Activating Art and Advocacy, will include 11 projects involving 28 grantees in Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, Richmond, Va., San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.

Helena Huang, the project director, says seeing artists and activists work together “helps us all imagine a world that is not dependent or overly reliant on a punishment culture.”

The project is starting with a $300,000 grant. Huang says Art for Justice will re-evaluate the project at the end of the year to decide if it will increase funding.

Huang says people who have spent time in prison bring unique insights to the criminal-justice debate. “About a quarter of the overall grants that we have made have gone directly to leaders who are impacted by the system,” she says.

The group’s other projects include supporting work on the bail system, prosecutorial accountability, and art-based diversion programs for youths. The new projects in the “Activating Art and Advocacy” follow that trend.

27 Years Behind Bars

Among the grantees from the new program is Norris Henderson, the founder and executive director of Voice of the Experienced, an advocacy group that educates the public on topics related to incarceration. Henderson, a former Soros Justice Fellow, says he was wrongfully incarcerated for 27 years. Since being released in 2003, he has used his experience to put other people who have gone to prison at the forefront of the justice-overhaul debate.

Henderson says Voice of the Experienced will use the grant to work with playwright and actress Liza Jessie Peterson to bring her critically acclaimed one-woman show The Peculiar Patriot to prisons in Louisiana. The play, which was completed around 2002, tells the story of a woman who visits a loved one in prison. Peterson said audiences eavesdrop on “girl talk” and hear about the intimate conversations between inmates and their families.

“I’m beside myself that I have the opportunity to now actually go to Angola Prison, and the character in my play mentions Angola,” Peterson said, adding that she taught and toured at New York City’s Rikers Island and other minimum, medium, and super-maximum security facilities. This and more were the subject of her new memoir.

Henderson and Peterson praised the Art for Justice Fund for bringing grantees together and then stepping back to allow them to create their own partnerships.

Talking to Prosecutors

Other grantees include the artist Xaviera Simmons and the nonprofit Fair and Just Prosecution. The pair will invite prosecutors from across the country to create a series of audio, video, and documentaries.

“We need to find a new normal for the criminal-justice system,” says Miriam Krinsky, executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution.

Another pair of grantees is the Arts for Incarcerated Youth Network and Performing Statistics, which will work with the Los Angeles County Arts Commission to create a five-day residency.

A Performing Statistics exhibition in Los Angeles will feature art created by youths in Virginia detention centers.

“I hope that more foundations or donor-advised funds continue to see more of the value with this,” says Trey Hartt, project director at Performing Statistics. “Often the arts are seen as some outside thing that makes a campaign or initiative prettier and just a nice backdrop. But we’re trying to take that to a much deeper level.”

Looking Ahead

When Gund donated the proceeds from “Masterpiece,” she said she wanted to see more collectors sell their works and have the proceeds go to social-justice programs. Huang says Art for Justice is making progress on that front. It is also working on a plan to have artists sell their work and give some of the proceeds to Art for Justice.

Here is a list of the other programs and grantees:

• The Civil Rights Corps commissioned artist Jesse Krimes, who was formerly in prison, to create the Mass Incarceration Quilt — a touring art exhibit that includes handmade quilts with images from incarcerated people. The project will also commission 14 artists who are or were in prison to contribute to the project.
• The Civil Rights Corps is also working with lawyer and poet Dwayne Betts and MacArthur “Genius” Titus Kaphar. Their new exhibit will focus on changing the cash-bail system. The exhibit will travel to communities, including high schools, with the highest rates of incarceration.
• Mural Arts Philadelphia will work with Russell Craig and Jesse Krimes to select a formerly incarcerated artist for a one-year residency in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office.
• Performing Statistics will work with other nonprofits including the Center for Court Innovation to sponsor artwork by people who are or have been in prison, culminating with an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.
• The New Press will partner with the Pretrial Justice Institute and We Got Us Now to provide 2,500 copies of various criminal-justice books to Art for Justice Fund grantees.
• Illinois Humanities will work with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting to host a half-day program to educate Pulitzer Center journalists and other leaders from Chicago institutions about criminal justice.
• California Lawyers for the Arts and the Voice of the Experienced will work with the Louisiana State Arts Council and the Louisiana Office of Cultural Development to hold 10- to 12-week art classes parish jails and transitional facilities.
• Friends of the High Line is working with others to install the “Writing on the Wall” exhibit on the High Line. The installation will include essays, poems, letters, stories, diagrams, and notes written by individuals in prison around the world. The group will also curate programs from organizations trying to improve criminal justice and organize guided walks, panel discussions, and other events. After the exhibit closes, the exhibit will travel to cities such as Chicago, Miami, and Toronto.