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The Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth team embrace fellow A4J grantee partner Halim Flowers. Photo by Jane Kratochvil

COMMUNITY BULLETIN 05.30
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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 safely reducing the number of people in jail and prison and shifting 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.
Catherine Gund, Agnes Gund, and Daisy DesRosiers celebrate the opening of No Justice Without Love at the Ford Foundation Gallery. Photo by Jane Kratochvil
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** ART FOR JUSTICE FUND EXCEEDS $125 MILLION IN GRANTMAKING TO ARTISTS AND ADVOCATES ENDING MASS INCARCERATION
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Founded in 2017, The Art for Justice (A4J) Fund announced its final cohort of 20 grant recipients. The grants will provide transformational support for The Center for Art & Advocacy (formerly Right of Return USA), as well as justice-related programming for the Cleveland Public Library Foundation, the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, and Worth Rises, among other organizations. In addition, 10 individual fellowships will directly benefit the work of formerly incarcerated and justice-impacted artists, many of them women of color.

Inaugurated under the unprecedented philanthropic vision of Agnes Gund, A4J launched with $100M generated from the sale of Gund’s favorite painting, Roy Lichtenstein’s Masterpiece (1962). This spurred artists, collectors, and supporters to donate an additional $25M+ in support of the Fund’s mission to advance policy reform, shift public narratives, and promote the leadership of formerly incarcerated people while centering art as a catalyst to transform the criminal legal system as a whole. The Fund was launched with the explicit mandate to allocate all resources to the field within a six-year period to secure maximum impact.

“Artists embody the vitality of our society—they often bring the inspiration, truth-telling, and mirrors we need to see the world around us. It’s exciting for Art for Justice to fulfill its mission to support artists, including more women artists, who have undoubtedly shaped my life and thinking,” said Agnes Gund. “As the Fund sunsets, I’m grateful for the artists and advocates working to end mass incarceration. I hope donors will continue supporting their efforts as our world needs more changemakers.”

The advocacy and arts organizations and individual artists in A4J’s spring 2023 grantee cohort represent an ambitious investment in the creative potential and lived experiences of formerly incarcerated and system-impacted citizens. This includes two institutional grants aiding the work of artists who are currently incarcerated, in an effort to support narrative change that transcends prison walls. Notably, grants provided to individual artists are unrestricted, allowing each recipient to aid their own practice as they see fit.

“Being a grantee of the Art for Justice Fund makes me feel cared for as an artist,” said Beverly Price, photographer and youth advocate. “In order for me to pour into my community through my photography practice and advocacy, I need to have the resources to pour into myself. When artists are given this kind of support, both financially and emotionally, we have the power to bring about structural and societal shifts that can create a more just world.”

The Fund’s final organizational grant recipients are:

ArtChangeUS is a national BIPOC- and artist-led initiative interrogating the role of creativity and cultural equity in this rapidly changing nation. Their grant will support the exhibition of artwork from currently incarcerated artists in Pennsylvania.

Brooklyn Museum brings people together through art, engaging diverse audiences and promoting perspectives that inspire celebration, compassion, courage, and the will to act. This grant will support the re-integration of incarcerated and previously incarcerated individuals with their families through a series of Mother’s Day-related programming.

The Center for Art & Advocacy (formerly Right of Return USA) is a national organization led by directly impacted artists who are creating an artist-led movement to challenge the narratives, institutions and policies that sustain mass incarceration and racial inequity in the U.S. This grant will aid The Center’s programmatic expansion, which aims to support 150 or more artists annually through residencies, fellowships and institutional partnerships.

Cleveland Public Library Foundation serves every neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, contributing to its diversity and intergenerational equity by developing programs and building collections that are diverse, inclusive, and culturally relevant. This grant will support the development of a series of public art installations addressing mass incarceration in Ohio.

Colloqate Design is a New Orleans-based design and architecture firm founded in 2017 to develop counter-carceral spaces that promote community cohesion, well-being, and healing while addressing the systemic harms caused by the criminal legal system. This grant will support the development of a Design Toolkit in collaboration with advocacy and arts organizations pursuing aligned goals of reallocating law enforcement resources to community-led safety initiatives.

Las Imaginistas is an artist collective based in Brownsville, Texas, on the US-Mexico border. Founded by three women in 2017, its work focuses on community empowerment through artistic expression and policy activism. This grant will support a campaign to interview and collaborate with directly impacted people to create artworks that imagine liberated solutions for community accountability and restorative justice.

The National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) works to reduce incarceration and violence, improve the outcomes of system-involved youth and adults, and increase the capacity of the organizations that serve these individuals. This grant will support the development of 10 jurisdictions in developing and implementing actionable plans to close youth correctional facilities and build community-based approaches to youth rehabilitation through reinvestment.

Restore Hope Arkansas is a grassroots organization that works with individuals and organizations to reduce incarceration and the need for foster care in Arkansas through a community-driven approach. This grant will support the work of currently incarcerated artists in a statewide campaign to discourage violence and encourage restorative dialogue.

The Returning Artists’ Guild is a Cleveland-based organization of directly-impacted artists dedicated to ending mass incarceration through community centered art practices, mentorship, and resilience-driven services for artists in re-entry and those who are still inside. This grant will help establish dedicated work space for members and staff and an artist residency model for returning citizens.

Worth Rises is a national organization dedicated to dismantling the prison industry and ending the exploitation of those it targets. This grant will provide foundational support for the organization’s #EndTheException campaign, which seeks to abolish the involuntary servitude of prison labor programs in the US.

The Fund’s final individual grant recipients are:

Michelle Browder (she/her) is an artist, activist, and non-profit leader based in Montgomery, Alabama. Her art includes a public monument to the enslaved Black women who endured a series of non-anesthetized gynecological experiments in the 1840s. Browder will expand the scale of her initiative, We Create Change Alabama, an art therapy program for formerly incarcerated persons and families suffering trauma from gun-related violence.

Monica Cosby (she/her) is a formerly incarcerated artist, poet and writer from Chicago, Illinois. Since coming home, she has collaborated on several art installations and exhibitions and designed arts curricula for use in prisons and on university campuses. Crosby will use her grant to support her ongoing performance art project, Acting OutSide, which addresses the harmful labeling of people as “violent.”

Sheri Crider (she/her) is a formerly incarcerated visual artist from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her interactive sculpture and painting engages nontraditional audiences in galleries, prison cells, classrooms, and courtrooms. Crider will create a series of works linking colonialism and racial capitalism to mass incarceration, and curate statewide programs that trace the intersections of immigrants, women, queer people, and the criminal legal system.

Jaiquan Fayson (he/him) is a visual artist based in New York City. Fayson rediscovered his childhood passion for drawing when he was commissioned by other incarcerated people to create greeting cards and portraits of their children. Fayson intends to complete several large-scale paintings, which are inspired by the Old Masters while tackling contemporary social issues and cultural themes.

Haley Greenfeather English (she/her) is a Red Lake and Turtle Mountain Anishinaabe artist and educator from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her work draws from observation, personal narrative, and recycled memories to break down imposed notions of reality based on Western European cultural biases. Greenfeather English will host a series of mural-making projects that will offer paid stipends to collaborating young adult artists.

Sara Kruzan (she/her) is a writer, visual artist, and activist based in California. In 1995, at the age of 17, she was convicted of killing her trafficker, a man, who began to groom her for the sex industry at the age of 11. Following her 2022 pardon, Kruzan has dedicated her life to advocating for children who find themselves in a position similar to the one she was in.

Beverly Price (she/her) is a formerly incarcerated fine arts photographer based in Washington, DC. Her approach encourages the active engagement of her photo subjects and bears witness to her neighborhood’s gentrification from a grassroots perspective. With A4J’s support, she will digitize, edit, archive, and ultimately produce a book of her work.

Victor Quiñonez (he/him) is a New York City-based visual artist working at the intersection of contemporary art, graffiti, fashion, and design. With paintings, murals, drawings, and mixed-media pieces, Quiñonez blends elements of street and pop culture with Mexican aesthetics. Quiñonez intends to create multimedia installations that focus on the beauty of Indigenous cultures in the US.

Rowan Renee (they/them) is a genderqueer multimedia artist and photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. Their work addresses intergenerational trauma, gender-based violence, and the impacts of the criminal legal system through image, text, and installation. Renee will interview formerly incarcerated individuals who have been through the Restorative Justice process and translate the information gathered into new material forms.

Louise Waakaa’igan (she/her) is an Anishinaabekwe poet enrolled at Odaawaa Zaaga‘iganiing (Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation) in northern Wisconsin. She released her debut poetry collection, This is Where, in the spring of 2020. Waakaa’igan intends to finish her second collection of poetry and establish writing workshops for Indigenous women incarcerated across Indian Country.

With the institutional support of the Ford Foundation and the management of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, A4J has generated momentum as a time-limited fund to support 200+ artists, and arts and advocacy organizations, making over 400 grants in total. Before A4J sunsets on June 30, 2023, it will have allocated more than $125M to partners and inspired other funders to champion this work.

“This final cohort of grants represents a full-circle moment for Art for Justice. Given that it was Ava DuVernay’s film 13th that first inspired Agnes to launch the Fund, it is fitting that we conclude our grantmaking with critical support to Worth Rises to expand a national campaign to remove this vestige of legalized slavery from the 13th Amendment of the US constitution,” said Helena Huang, Art for Justice Fund project director. “We anticipate public support for this effort to continue growing.”

Over the past six years, the Fund has concentrated on grantmaking in three major policy areas: bail reform that reduces the number of people needlessly detained in jail; sentencing reform that eliminates the excessive and disproportionate punishment of young people and people of color; and the creation of meaningful reentry opportunities for formerly incarcerated individuals to support themselves and their families. A4J embodies a model wherein art becomes the very means by which justice is secured. By leveraging partnerships and inspiring impact, A4J catalyzes the power of art as a tool to end mass incarceration, and builds a foundation for lasting change.

“This year marks a pivotal turning point for the campaign to #EndTheException in the Thirteenth Amendment, and truly abolish slavery for all, as we reintroduce the Abolition Amendment with bipartisan sponsors,” said Bianca Tylek, executive director of Worth Rises, which is leading the #EndTheException coalition of more than 80 national organizations. “The gift that Art for Justice gave us goes far beyond its financial support. There is a community of artists and advocates engaging in impactful partnerships. I know I speak for many when I say that A4J will be missed, but their legacy will be honored in each of us as we continue this work.”

Daniel Forkkio of Represent Justice and Bianca Tylek of Worth Rises.Photo by Jane. Kratochvil

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** UNVEILING THE WRITING FREEDOM FELLOWSHIP
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This fall, Haymarket Books will launch the Writing Freedom Fellowship, a program to support writers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction impacted by the criminal legal system. In its inaugural year, Writing Freedom will grant 20 writers a significant unrestricted award based upon their existing body of work. Additionally, Haymarket will provide one year of support through mentorship, professional development, and shared learning with writers in their cohort.

Writing Freedom aims to uplift the vital artistic and cultural contributions of system-impacted writers of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. The term “system-impacted” calls attention to the broad reach of the criminal legal system—one of the most inequitable and inhumane structures in our society. Nearly half of all people in the United States have a family member or a loved one who has spent time in prison or jail. Writing Freedom will support writers who have been directly and indirectly touched by these carceral institutions.

This new Fellowship seeks to foster writers’ creative practices and build community against the backdrop of a system that is premised on punishment and designed to isolate and often silence personal expression. Writing Freedom Fellows need not have written on themes related to the criminal legal system.

“Haymarket Books remains iron ready for the necessary work of impressing theories, ideas, and stories that have survived/and are surviving the prison industrial complex,” said Mahogany L. Browne, advisory board member and Executive Director of JustMedia. “It is no wonder the heartbeat of this Fellowship beats rapidly, in a serious and meaningful effort to center the voices and celebrate the creative integrity of writers impacted by one of the world's most treatable epidemics: mass incarceration.”

Julie Ehrlich and Elizabeth Alexander of Mellon Foundation and A4J Advisors, Margaret Morton and Tanya Coke, of Ford Foundation. Photo by Jane. Kratochvil

The Writing Freedom Fellowship has an advisory board of nine writers and advocates, including Browne, Hanif Abdurraqib, Lawrence Bartley, Mahogany L. Browne, Natalie Diaz, Tayari Jones, Rachel Kushner, Romarilyn Ralston, Andrea J. Ritchie, and Christopher Soto. Haymarket is building the Fellowship with support from and in collaboration with the Art for Justice Fund ([link removed]) and the Mellon Foundation ([link removed]) . Expanding on its existing history of support for higher education in prison programs, the Mellon Foundation recently launched Imagining Freedom—a $125 million initiative that supports arts, culture, and humanities work that centers the voices and expertise of people directly affected by the U.S. criminal legal system, to deepen a shared understanding of the system, address the damage it causes, and move toward justice.

“I’m grateful to be a part of the network developing and administering this fellowship because it returns some of what bureaucracy and abuse often steal from artists: the time and resources which facilitate the peace of mind crucial to the creative process,” said Maya Marshall, Poetry Editor at Haymarket Books and Professor of Creative Writing at Adelphi University. “Waning time is at the center of all political and creative work. Reclaiming one’s own time or granting it to someone else is the ultimate gift.”

Writing Freedom Fellows will be selected from a pool of candidates nominated by a diverse group of writers and advocates who have been invited into this process. Haymarket will announce the first cohort of Writing Freedom Fellows this fall.

Right of Return Fellows gather in Phoenix, AZ. Photo by Maurice Sartiana

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** CENTER FOR ART & ADVOCACY OFFERS EXPANSIVE AND INNOVATIVE PROGRAMS
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Art for Justice Fund applauds The Center for Art & Advocacy (CA&A) for launching its expanded operations on May 25th. Building on its Right of Return Fellowship, it is the first national artist-led organization dedicated to supporting and mentoring justice-impacted creatives. With key support from A4J and Mellon Foundation, CA&A is rolling out a capital campaign to garner resources and recognition for justice-impacted artists within the US who are especially at risk of being under-funded, under-mentored, under-resourced, and under-connected within traditional institutions and arts communities.

The Center for Art & Advocacy provides resources and visibility through funded fellowships, mentorship programs, training opportunities, and platforms for presentation and dialogue. The Center invests in artists and the creation of conceptually rigorous new artwork and deepens directly-impacted artists’ critical analysis to change cultural narratives.

“The launch of the Center for Art & Advocacy marks a pivotal moment in the fight to end mass incarceration,” said Agnes Gund. “Right of Return’s founding in 2016 was a groundbreaking step in supporting system-impacted artists and their work to create a future of shared safety for all. Art for Justice Fund is thrilled to support our partner’s evolution into a physical hub with expanded programming, all dedicated to transforming the criminal legal system through the arts."

The Center for Art & Advocacy’s work spans three programs: the Right of Return Fellowship, the Academy, and the Residency. The distinct facets are mutually reinforcing and provide entry points and support for directly impacted artists at every stage of their career.
* The Right of Return Fellowship ([link removed]) , an existing program that catalyzed the creation of the Center for Art & Advocacy. The Fellowship was originally launched in 2016 by formerly incarcerated artists Jesse Krimes and Russell Craig in partnership with the Soze Agency as the only national fellowship specifically serving artists impacted by the justice system.
* The Academy provides training and professional development to directly impacted writers, filmmakers, and artists who are emerging or developing their artistic practices. The Academy includes workshops, masterclasses, and intensives hosted in partnership with cultural institutions across the country.
* The Residency, which will open in Northeast Pennsylvania in 2024, will serve as a generative space offering short and long-term stays to Academy and Right of Return alumni, as well as leading social justice advocates from around the nation.

“Over the course of A4J’s six year history, we have seen the transformative effect justice-impacted artists are having on the art world and how they are continuing to shift the narrative around mass incarceration in this country,” added Ford Foundation president Darren Walker. “I hope the world has taken notice and will continue to center the voices and leadership of formerly incarcerated people. We will be cheering on CA&A as they bring solutions to end these injustices.”

In the fall, the Center for Art & Advocacy’s will open its physical space in Brooklyn, NY. Public components will include exhibitions, performances, talks, and convenings. The organization’s website (centerforartandadvocacy.org/#the-future) will also serve as an evolving educational resource for artists.

Artist and grantee partner, Jesse Krimes, will serve as the organization’s Executive Director. Krimes’ work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, Palais de Tokyo, and Philadelphia Museum of Art. He was awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Pew Center, Rauschenberg Foundation, Creative Capital. “I first imagined building a community of formerly incarcerated artists while I was isolated in a prison cell. In a nation with 2 million people behind bars, it’s abundantly clear how many talented artists are criminalized, incarcerated and locked out of creative opportunities,” said Krimes. “I’m profoundly grateful to the A4J and Aggie Gund for believing in the power of an artist-led movement and am honored to carry their legacy forward with the Center’s work.”

The Center has forged partnerships with artists including Rashid Johnson, Titus Kaphar, Hank Willis Thomas, and Mickalene Thomas, whose works were included in a 2022 Christie’s auction in support of the organization. These artists have also served as mentors for Right of Return fellows. In the years to come, the Center will continue to expand its collaborations with artists, museums, and other cultural and advocacy organizations nationwide.

“The development of the Center for Art & Advocacy is an important step forward for cultural producers with backgrounds we see far too rarely in the art world,” said artist Rashid Johnson. “As a mentor for artists in the Right of Return Fellowship, I’ve seen the impact of meaningful support for those creating powerful new works.”

The growing Board of Directors includes Right of Return Co-Founder Russell Craig; poet, lawyer, and inaugural Right of Return Fellow Dwayne Betts; Kate Fowle, Curatorial Senior Director at Hauser & Wirth; art collector and Brooklyn Museum trustee Stephanie Ingrassia; actress and philanthropist Kate Capshaw, and Daveen Trentman, Co-Founder of The Soze Agency. The Center’s development has also been supported by Right of Return alumnus Faylita Hicks.

Writer, artist, and A4J grantee partner, Liza Jesse Peterson finds a familiar book at No Justice Without Love. Photo by Jane. Kratochvil

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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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Michelle Danielle Jones, Catherine Gund, jackie sumell, and Mary Baxter sharing a joyful moment. Photo by Maurice Sartiana

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