Faith Ringgold (American, b. 1930), “Coming to Jones Road: Under a Blood Red Sky,” 2007. Digital print with hand lithography, 12 × 12 inches (sheet). Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia; Museum purchase with funds provided by the Byrnece Purcell Knox Swanson Acquisitions Fund and the Richard E. and Lynn Rudikoff Berkowitz Acquisition Endowment. GMOA 2019.329.13.
This exhibition results from a collaborative project that brought works of art from the museum’s collection into classrooms at Whitworth Women’s Facility, a prison in north Georgia.
With an aim to cultivate community and empathetic con- nection through art and writing, despite vast differences in space, time and resources, the incarcerated women at the facility involved in this project selected the works in this exhibition and wrote prose and poetry in response to them. This interinstitutional project seeks to cultivate community and empathetic connection through art and writing, despite vast differences in space, time and resources. Since 2021, Callan Steinmann, curator of education at the museum, has worked with Caroline Young, lecturer of English at the University of Georgia and site director for the Common Good Atlanta program at Whitworth Women's Fa- cility, on the project. Common Good Atlanta, founded in 2010, provides people who are incarcerated or formerly incarcer- ated with access to higher education by connecting Georgia’s colleges and professors with Georgia’s prison classrooms. Common Good’s Clemente Course in the Humanities offers students college credit through Bard College in subjects like critical thinking and writing, literature, U.S. history, philosophy and art history. Young’s UGA service-learning English course, Writing for Social Justice: The Prison Writing Project, has linked the museum to the incarcerated students in Clemente classes at Whitworth. Over the course of several semesters in 2021 and 2022, Young’s students considered how they might bring a museum experience to incarcerated women at Whitworth Women's Facility. UGA students learned about the museum’s collection and selected over 140 works of art to share with the women’s
facility students through high-quality reproductions of each work of art, information about the artist, relevant historical context and questions to prompt reflections and interpreta - tion. The UGA students sought to represent the diversity of the collection while highlighting artists traditionally exclud- ed from the mainstream art historical narrative. Starting in the fall of 2021, Common Good Atlanta Clemente instructors Don Chambers and Caroline Young integrated these art kits into their course curriculum at the wom- en’s facility. Incarcerated students there engaged with the art through close looking, discussion, creative writing and making art of their own. They then narrowed down a selection of works of art that were personally meaningful and resonated with them. The works that they chose, along with their accompanying writing, make up the entirety of this exhibition and relate to themes of identity, mother- hood, incarceration, home, childhood, social issues, memory and mysteries. Viewed together, these works question and challenge the ways in which art and educational institutions can foster or hinder societal awareness and social equity. The exhibition exemplifies just one of many potential new ways to approach and understand the far-reaching impacts of higher education in the prison systems.
In-House Curator: Callan Steinmann, curator of education
Amalia Amaki (American, b. 1959), “Blue Lady,” 2004. Photograph, 28 × 30 inches. Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia; The Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Collection of African American Art. GMOA 2016.137.
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