Recently, I was approached by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs to have my work considered for public commissions at six sites through their program Percent for Art. As an artist working in public space, these kinds of solicitations are neither rare nor unwelcome. However, the context of this one disturbed me: of the six locations offered, the first four were detention centers or jails.
My response, which I posted on Instagram last November, was simple and clear: “I am not available for commissions in jails, prisons, or detention centers now or in the future. As a staunch abolitionist against the carceral system, I understand that these types of buildings will be constructed using public monies (including my own tax dollars) whether or not I give my consent. However, as much as I would like to get that money back, I am not ethically able to do so via paid artistic work that serves to beautify a terrifying system. I believe that the only ethical use of a several hundred thousand dollar budget under these conditions is to use every cent of it to support organizations working to dismantle the carceral system — a proposal that I understand Percent for Art would not be able to support.”
Why any organization would reach out to commission potential public prison projects by an artist who has published an essay about the role of public art within the context of abolition is beyond me. But I wasn’t the only artist who received this or a similar invitation with some hesitation and surprise. My friend and peer American Artist told me that their initial response to the message was to consider proposing a demolition — which, they said, was well within the budgetary scope we were given for potential projects. Artist, whose work has directly engaged with abolitionist pursuits for the majority of their career, also seems like an odd choice for such an invitation. In response to my Instagram post, I also heard from socially engaged artists Maria Gaspar, who has worked directly against carceral systems as well as with incarcerated individuals, and Helina Metaferia, who received similarly surprising invitations.
The funny thing is that all of this has very little to do with art — the art is the symptom. Commissions for multi-hundred-thousand-dollar public art projects for jail sites are a reflection of the overall amount of money designated for the construction and maintenance of certain types of public buildings and spaces over others. Budgets tell us a story. Consider the discrepancy between how much New York City allocates to keep a single person in prison for a year (an average of $115,000) and how much is allocated to support a public school student for a year ($32,284). Under these conditions of financial priority, the art is simply an afterthought: a single, governmentally mandated percentage of the city’s entire construction budget for a project. Percent for Art’s website states that the goal of the program “is to bring artists into the design process and enrich the City’s civic and community buildings.” What purpose does this creative enrichment serve when the buildings that host it are harmful?
To be clear, I do not hold this invitation against Percent for Art or its employees. Their response to my statement that I cannot be considered for commissions at jails, prisons, or detention centers either now or in the future was incredibly polite and understanding. However, I want to take a moment to consider the implications of what this request is asking: After a multibillion-dollar expenditure to build new jails and detention centers (just two of the sites on the list for commissions are already coming in at a cost point of roughly $7 billion), what is the intended role of a $600,000-to-$900,000 beautification project? The construction of new jails is, according to New York City’s Department of Design and Construction, a necessary and “more humane” solution in preparation for the proposed 2027 shuttering of Rikers Island — a notoriously violent jail, the conditions of which are so dire that the city was recently found in contempt of a 2015 ruling to limit abuse there. On an art-related note, Rikers’s closing has also necessitated an answer to the question, what happens to the art at the prison? Faith Ringgold’s mural has been acquired by the Brooklyn Museum. Other works, including a condescending Salvador Dalí (apparently made in two hours after the artist canceled a visit with inmates due to illness, and featuring a misspelled greeting), have been either lost or stolen; still other works, including those by the people incarcerated there, are likely to be forgotten.
In response to the invitation to submit my work for consideration, I instead offer three propositions:
- What would it mean to use Percent for Art’s commission funds to support existing artists who are already within the prison population? Recent blockbuster museum exhibitions — including but not limited to those curated by Risa Puleo at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and Nicole Fleetwood at MoMA PS1— as well as trends within the commercial art market have demonstrated that there are many excellent artists who are more than worthy of support, trapped within a system that pays them less than a dollar an hour to work. If someone is going to financially benefit from the single percentage of the construction budget that goes toward creative work, it should be the artists suffering at the hands of the system, not someone like me.
- While American Artist’s proposal of demolition is conceptually sound and satisfying in one kind of way (it brings to mind — and expands upon — the work of Maria Eichhorn, who used the money and mechanisms of the art world to shutter London’s Chisenhale Gallery for the duration of her 2016 exhibition, complete with an educational symposium on labor conditions in the art world), what would it mean to use the commission funds to support institutions working to abolish the carceral system, or to fund programs more likely to be helpful, including supportive housing and mental health services that are widely considered to be both more humane and more economically sustainable?
- Percent for Art’s website specifies that the commissioning monies for its program go toward eligible city-funded construction projects. What would it mean for the program to declare that jail, detention center, or prison construction projects are no longer eligible to receive public art commissions? While this proposition does not return money to where it is most needed, nor does it diminish the likelihood of the construction of further carceral projects, I believe it reflects an interesting shift in society’s attitude toward the carceral system’s place within a larger web of public works and space: that we will no longer beautify sites that disregard human rights in both the short and long term.
An invitation to create a permanent public commission in a jail, prison, or detention center indicates a belief that these buildings, and the systems they represent, are also permanent. Both as an artist and as a human being, I refuse to lean into that world with any part of myself or my creative work. While this boycott may not signal an end to the carceral system, at minimum my refusal to participate gives me time, energy, and creative will to work toward systems that imagine, and allow us to live, otherwise.
