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Agnes Gund, Dwayne Betts, Catherine Gund, and Michelle Jones. Photo © 2022 Maurice Sartirana.

Friends,

Season’s greetings to Art for Justice’s supporters and partners! Thanks to your generosity, the Fund has awarded more than $116 million in grants to over 200 advocates, artists, and organizations in 5 years.

We can be proud of how Art for Justice (A4J) aligns artists, advocates and donors to transform the criminal legal system and create a future of shared safety for all. The Fund focuses on key policy areas: 1) ending cash bail to reduce the number of people needlessly detained in jail; 2) sentencing reform to eliminate excessive and disproportionate punishment – particularly for people of color; and 3) removing legal barriers to “re-entry” for formerly incarcerated individuals to support themselves and live free of stigma.

At A4J, we also embrace narrative change as a vital tool to end mass incarceration. Art enables us to see the depth of human suffering that our criminal legal system perpetrates. Empathy must be fostered and hearts/minds altered before meaningful policy and practice shifts can truly take hold. Our combined support for policy and narrative change has galvanized significant advances, including winning voting rights for returning citizens with felony convictions, public art installations like James Hough’s Justice Reflected in Battery Park City, and having 32 states end the practice of life without parole sentences for children.

Top: Scott Hechinger, Insha Rahman, Alec Karakatsanis and Daniel Forkkio. Bottom-left: Szu-Han Ho, Francisco Cantu, and Juan Ortiz. Bottom-Right: Margaret Morton, Tanya Coke, and Helena Huang. All photos © 2022 Maurice Sartirana.

By contributing the proceeds from art sales, collectors and artists have elevated a model of philanthropy wherein art becomes the very means by which justice is secured. This fall, for example, Stanley Whitney donated The Freedom We Fight For to benefit Planned Parenthood of Greater New York and A4J. Abortion bans and mass incarceration are intersecting issues—rooted in racism—that especially harm Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities. These injustices reflect the nation’s history of over-policing and lack of high quality reproductive care for Black and Brown people, robbing them of freedom to make decisions about their health, families, and futures.

A4J was always intended to be a time-limited catalytic fund. Its relatively short duration helps artists, advocates and organizations to grow their work faster and more sustainably via deeper investments. Because of the urgent need to transform the criminal legal system, grantee partners found efficiencies and economies of scale to win policy and narrative changes more quickly. And with A4J’s grantmaking budget, staff were able to forge partnerships with institutional funders that leveraged additional philanthropic dollars for these efforts.

When the Fund closes in June of 2023, a mighty group of artists, advocates, and allied donors stand ready to continue the fight to end mass incarceration. But we know this work is not finished. Through March of 2023, A4J welcomes all donations. Thanks to the Ford Foundation, the Fund’s administrative costs are covered, so 100% of gifts reach grantee partners. Final grants will be made by May of 2023, while our team documents the impact of the A4J community to attract ongoing institutional, corporate, and individual support.

It has been a tremendous honor to join with you to help transform the criminal legal system and create safer and healthier communities for all of us.

With gratitude,

Agnes Gund
Founder and Board Chair, Art for Justice Fund


Top: Sue Simon, LeAnne Alexander, Terrence Bogans, Amy Holmes, Agnes Gund and Helena Huang. Bottom-left: Paul Rucker, Catherine Gund, and Sean Leonardo. Bottom-Right: Claudia Pena. All photos © 2022 Maurice Sartirana.

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