'Imagining Freedom' will give $125 million to art projects focused on incarceration
Since 2020, the Mellon Foundation has given over $40 million to arts and humanities projects addressing mass incarceration. In all, it says, it will donate $125 million to such efforts.
Making and sharing art is powerful — and maybe even more so for people who are incarcerated. That's the premise behind a huge new initiative from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which is pledging $125 million to arts and humanities organizations that focus on mass incarceration.
In 1991 in Ohio, was convicted and then imprisoned for 20 years for crimes that he was later found . While he was incarcerated, he kept his sanity by creating miniature sculptures out of things he scavenged from around the prison. He created whimsical bits of Americana from stuff like the foil from packages of cigarettes, used tea bags and pins from the prison
