How Art Changed the Prison

The Work of the CPA Prison Arts Program

Exhibition Website

Jan 27 2019 - May 27 2019

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is pleased to present an exhibition of visual art made in Connecticut’s correctional institutions over the past three decades, borrowed from current and former inmates, private collections, including that of the curator, and from the permanent collection of the Prison Arts Program, which is part of Community Partners in Action (CPA), a non-profit that focuses on behavioral change of both current and past inmates of Connecticut’s prison system, in addition to advocating for criminal justice reform. Organized by Jeffrey Greene, who has been with the program for twenty-seven years, the exhibition will include the work of approximately twenty-eight artists.

The majority of the work on view was made in the artists’ cells using materials that require minimal workspace, dry quickly, and can be stored immediately, such as ballpoint pen, graphite, and colored pencil. Several artists use more traditional prison art media including toilet paper, cut and folded paper, magazines, ramen noodle packaging, thread, yarn, floor wax, Q-tips, and soap. Often these works involve hundreds of hours of rigorous focus. The artists’ work reflects their ever-changing and complicated lives within the prison system affected by cellmates, prison blocks/units, prison transfers, prison staff, access to materials, access to workshops, colleagues, critiques, as well as mental and physical health. How Art Changed the Prison offers a glimpse at art’s role in the lives of people in Connecticut’s prison system.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

  • Various Media
  • American
  • Various artists

Exhibition Venues & Dates