Agnes Gund’s fund to end mass incarceration reveals its final round of grants

The Artwork for Justice Fund based by collector, philanthropist and Museum of Trendy Artwork president emerita Agnes Gund to help artists and programmes working to finish mass incarceration, has named its ultimate cohort of 20 grantees. Launched six years in the past with seed cash from the sale of a prized Roy Lichtenstein portray from Gund’s assortment and supported by way of subsequent gross sales, the initiative will finish on a excessive observe with the ultimate disbursements from its $125m reserves.

Over the course of its existence, the fund has collaborated with the Ford Basis and advisors from Rockefeller Philanthropy to distribute greater than 400 grants to over 200 organisations. Following this ultimate spherical of grants, the fund will stop to function on 30 June.

“Artists embody the vitality of our society—they usually convey the inspiration, truth-telling, and mirrors we have to see the world round us. It’s thrilling for Artwork for Justice to satisfy its mission to help artists together with extra ladies artists, who’ve undoubtedly formed my life and considering,” Gund mentioned in a press release. “Because the fund sunsets, I’m grateful for the artists and advocates working to finish mass incarceration, and I hope extra donors will help their efforts as our world wants extra changemakers.”

Divided into two grant classes, the fund’s ultimate grant recipients embody organisations and people. This season, organisational funding has been given to 10 organisations, together with to an initiative on the Brooklyn Museum to bolster Mom’s Day programming that prioritises household reintegration; Restore Hope Arkansas, a community-driven non-profit, to help a marketing campaign that includes the work of at present incarcerated artists and supposed to scale back gang violence; and Las Imaginistas in Brownsville, Texas, to assist in decreasing the affect of incarceration on weak communities close to the US-Mexico border.

One other organisational beneficiary is Value Rises, an advocacy group searching for to dismantle the commercialisation of the felony authorized system. The fund’s help will assist broaden Value Rises’ #EndTheException marketing campaign, which goals to erase the exception within the US Structure’s thirteenth modification that enables slavery as a “punishment for a criminal offense”, the loophole used to justify exploitative labour practices in jails and prisons.

“On condition that it was Ava DuVernay’s movie thirteenth that first impressed Agnes to launch the fund, it’s becoming that we conclude our grantmaking with essential help to Value Rises to broaden a nationwide marketing campaign to take away this vestige of legalised slavery from the thirteenth Modification of the nation’s structure” Helena Huang, the fund’s challenge director., mentioned in a press release.

“The present that Artwork for Justice gave us goes past its monetary help—Artwork for Justice has created a neighborhood of artists and advocates from which unbelievable partnerships have spurred essential social affect,” Bianca Tylek, the manager director of Value Rises, mentioned.

One of many ten particular person grantees on this ultimate cohort is Beverly Worth, a photographer and youth advocate working in Washington, DC. “To ensure that me to pour into my neighborhood by way of my pictures follow and advocacy, I must have the assets to pour into myself,” Worth mentioned in a press release. “When artists are given this sort of help, each financially and emotionally, we have now the ability to result in structural and social shifts that may create a extra simply world.”

Different grantees embody Monica Cosby, a poet and artist in Chicago; Haley Greenfeather English, a painter in Albuquerque; and Victor “Marka27” Quiñonez, a graffiti artist and muralist primarily based in New York Metropolis.

The Artwork for Justice Fund has concentrated its advocacy in three major areas—bail reform, sentencing reform and the cultivation of reentry alternatives for individuals who have been previously incarcerated.