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Last month, grantee partner Samora Pinderhughes performed a concert version ([link removed]) of The Healing Project at New York's Carnegie Hall. He was recently awarded a $1 M grant from the Mellon Foundation to expand his multi-media piece into new forms. Courtesy of the artist, photo by Ray Neutron.

COMMUNITY BULLETIN 04.23
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** COMMUNICATIONS DISPATCH
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Art for Justice (A4J) works with artists, advocates, and allied donors to end mass incarceration. We support grantee partners to safely reduce the number of people in jail and prison and shift the narrative around criminal justice through art. Until the Fund ceases operations at the end of June, we intend to fortify individual leaders and organizations to transform the broken criminal legal system and the racial bias that drives it. Our team aims to be transparent in its actions and will continue engaging with community members and sharing updates via this bulletin and other mediums.

FBOP (Federal Bauhaus of Prisons), 2022, by Jared Owens, Wood, aluminum, acrylic, foam, burlap pig feed sack, soil from prison yard at F.C.I. Fairton. Courtesy of the Artist, photo by Sebastian Bach
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** FORD GALLERY CELEBRATES LASTING IMPACT OF ART FOR JUSTICE
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Tonight, April 4th, is the opening of a group exhibition at the Ford Foundation Gallery entitled, No Justice Without Love. It features the transformational work of artists, thought partners, and supporters who make up the Art for Justice Fund community. The exhibition is an invitation to engage with the Fund's mission of bringing artists, activists, and allied donors together to end mass incarceration. By emphasizing the voices, experiences, and artistic practices of those directly impacted by our criminal justice system, No Justice Without Love imagines a future where shared safety is available to all.

The exhibition is curated by Daisy Desrosiers, Director and Chief Curator of the Gund Gallery at Kenyon College and produced by Lisa Kim, Ford Foundation’s Gallery Director. It presents work by artists, grantees, and allied donors including Benny Andrews, Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, Mark Bradford, Russell Craig, Halim Flowers, Faylita Hicks, Szu-Han Ho, James Yaya Hough, Maria Gaspar, Jesse Krimes, Julie Mehretu, Faith Ringgold, Jared Owens, The People’s Paper Co-op, Sherrill Roland, and Stanley Whitney, among others.

Cognitive Thinking, 2023, by Russell Craig, Mixed media. Courtesy of the Artist, photo by Sebastian Bach

The opening of No Justice Without Love will feature a special performance by composer/musician Paul Rucker. A tea ceremony will be hosted on site by multi-disciplinary artist jackie sumell. One gallery wall is dedicated to The Writing on the Wall, a traveling exhibition of essays, poems, letters, and diagrams by individuals from around the world who’ve experienced incarceration. The installation is a collaboration between Hank Willis Thomas and Dr. Baz Dreisinger. For Freedoms, an artist collective that centers art and creativity as a catalyst for transformative connection and liberation, created the large banners hanging near the front doors of the Ford Foundation. Rucker, sumell, Willis Thomas, Dreisinger, and For Freedoms are all grantee partners of Art for Justice.

“No Justice Without Love speaks to the many ways art connects, heals, and binds us together. This exhibition is a testament to the power of art to make visible the injustices of mass incarceration,” said Agnes Gund, Founder of Art for Justice. “Through her curatorial vision, Daisy Desrosiers has captured the rich, expansive spirit of our community of artists and advocates by weaving together those in the movement who came before us, those who are with us now, and those who will continue to reimagine justice in the future.”

The exhibition will be on view at Ford Foundation Gallery in New York through June 30, 2023.

Gazing Ball (Goya The Forge), 2015–17, by Jeff Koons
Oil on canvas, glass, and aluminum
Courtesy of the Artist

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** KOONS DONATES SEMINAL WORK
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Jeff Koons has donated Gazing Ball (Goya The Forge), 2015–17, to benefit Art for Justice. Through this series, Koons is in dialogue with artists of the past, such as Titian, El Greco, and Manet. In this piece, Koons subtly altered while maintaining exacting detail of Francisco Goya’s The Forge, ca. 1815–20 (The Frick Collection, New York). The viewer, exhibition space, and painting are each reflected in the glass orb rendering the 21st century viewer a participant in artistic representation across cultural history.

If the piece is sold by April 30, the Fund can support additional partners via its final grants process. Koons joins Dwayne Betts, Mark Bradford, Nick Cave, Paula Crown, Futura (aka Leonard McGurr), Titus Kaphar, Julie Mehretu, and Stanley Whitney as artist donors. Along with generous collectors, galleries, individuals, and businesses, more than $25 million has been raised to augment Agnes Gund’s $100 million founding gift. Because the Ford Foundation covers all administrative costs, every dollar given to the Fund goes directly to artists, advocates, and organizations on the front lines.

“My gallery is thrilled to be selling Gazing Ball (Goya The Forge) on behalf of the Fund,” said Craig Starr. “Through his donation, Jeff Koons is literally transforming his art into justice. I’m pleased to do my part in seeking a buyer for this extraordinary work.” For more information about Gazing Ball (Goya The Forge), please contact Craig Starr Gallery at (212) 570-1739 or via email at [email protected]. The Fund is grateful to Jeff Koons and Craig Starr.

The Fountain House Gallery at 702 Ninth Avenue in Manhattan. Photo courtesy of Fountain House.

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** FOUNTAIN HOUSE BESTOWS LEADERSHIP AWARD ON A4J
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On April 20th, grantee partner, Fountain House will host an event, YELL! Fountain House Gallery Annual Art Auction & Benefit ([link removed]) in support of artists living with mental illness. The Fund is grateful to be the 2023 recipient of Fountain House’s Esther Montanez Leadership Award. Both A4J and Fountain House believe in the dignity and rights of all people. Together, we celebrate the transformative power of art to shift narratives, bear witness, and build a society free of stigma and inequality. Please visit give.fountainhouse.org/yell
([link removed]) to purchase tickets or get more information.

For 75 years, Fountain House has been a beacon of hope and recovery for people living with serious mental illness (SMI). Through direct service clubhouse programs, it has transformed the lives of tens of thousands of New Yorkers who are called “members.” Its pioneering model has inspired 200 communities across the U.S. to create their own clubhouses. Fountain House’s innovative approach begins with the insight that community is therapy and prioritizes the leadership of people with SMI.

Art created by Fountain House members. Photo courtesy of Fountain House.

In demonstrating that recovery and thriving are possible, Fountain House illustrates a path to radically improve the life trajectories for people with mental health challenges. A place of belonging for those too often discarded by society, members and staff work side-by-side in all daily operations. While at the clubhouse, members are connected with resources to support their basic needs, such as employment, education, relationship building, housing and health. When people with SMI get snared in the criminal legal system, their mental health needs often go unmet or become exacerbated by incarceration.

Since 2000, Fountain House has operated a Manhattan-based Gallery to sell original artworks by members and collaborate with a wide network of artists, curators, and cultural institutions. The Studio, a dedicated working space in Long Island City, provides member-artists with the resources, training, inspiration, and support they need to succeed in the highly competitive art world. Full-time access to the studio, where free art supplies are available, assists these artists in moving to a new level of creativity, expanding their marketable portfolios, and advancing their efforts to achieve broader name recognition and commercial success. At Fountain House Studio, artists living with mental illness work side by side with others in a collaborative setting that reduces isolation and fosters a supportive community.

The Studio offers member artists a well-equipped and encouraging work space.
Photo courtesy of Fountain House.
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** TAKING STOCK
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It feels hard to believe the Fund’s final round of grantmaking is fast approaching. In 2017, founder Agnes Gund contributed $100 million to confront root injustice problems, champion innovative solutions, and support new visions for shared safety via a five year initiative. She and A4J board member, Darren Walker, helped raise an additional $25+ million to extend A4J’s efforts by one year. Being a time-limited project was always the intended strategy. It enabled Art for Justice to make deeper investments to secure policy and narrative change and to support greater field building among artists, advocates, and allied donors. A six year duration inspired more creative grantmaking and required the Fund to respond to needs in real time (e.g., the Covid crisis inside prisons and jails, opportune state-based ballot measures transforming criminal legal system policies). To date, Art for Justice has allocated $115 million to 200+ individual and organizational grantee partners via some 400 grants. By
June 2023, the Fund will have made close to $130 million in grants.
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** RESILIENT COMMUNITY
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The current charged political environment requires us to be extra resilient – at a time many are feeling depleted by backlash to the racial justice reckoning and erosion of human rights here and around the world. We know such swings come, in part, as a reaction to the powerful progress that’s been made by those seeking to transform the criminal legal system. The work of healing individuals, families, systems, and our democracy is activated by the Art for Justice community. We see a welcome push towards intersectional movement building – an understanding that when we lift together, all of us will rise. Grantee partners are forging strategic coalitions in support of policy, practice, and narrative issues in unprecedented ways. There has been dramatic growth in funding for criminal justice reform over the past few years—and this trend continues. Together, artists, advocates, and allied funders will continue disrupting mass incarceration and building a future of shared safety for all.


** On behalf of the Fund’s Board and staff, we are honored to support this movement.
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