Behind These Walls: Reckoning with Incarceration

James A. Michener Art Museum

Artist jackie sumell working in the Solitary Gardens on Andry Street, New Orleans, Louisiana. Photo by Maiwenn Raoult. sumell will plant and tend a new Solitary Garden as part of the Michener Museum's Behind These Walls: Reckoning with Incarceration. — Artist jackie sumell working in the Solitary Gardens on Andry Street, New Orleans, Louisiana. Photo by Maiwenn Raoult. sumell will plant and tend a new Solitary Garden as part of the Michener Museum's *Behind These Walls: Reckoning with Incarceration.*

jackie sumell, Solitary Garden at the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut, 2021.

jackie sumell, Solitary Gardens on Andry Street, New Orleans, Louisiana. Photo by Maiwenn Raoult.

Recipient

Grant Year 2023

Grant Amount $184,580

Status Active

Updated March 25, 2024

The Michener commissions multidisciplinary artist jackie sumell to develop a “Solitary Garden” as part of a project that recognizes the museum building’s original function as the Bucks County Prison. Designed in correspondence with a currently incarcerated person, sumell’s garden bed installation is the same size and blueprint as many prison cells. Additionally, the museum works with an advisory committee of local community members to consider the history of its site, mass incarceration, and public monuments.

The total grant amount represents project funding plus an additional 20% in unrestricted general operating support.

Recipient

James A. Michener Art Museum

Named for Doylestown's most famous son, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer James A. Michener, this museum was founded in 1988 with a regional focus, housing a collection of Pennsylvania impressionist paintings. An ongoing interest is the collection and exhibition of the work of art-furniture makers and designers working in the Bucks County area, such as George Nakashima.

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