Art exhibitions have helped turn Alcatraz into a place to think as well as gawk
as the Rock, was once among America’s most fearsome prisons, cut off from the free world on a windswept island in San Francisco Bay. Today it is a national park, visited by 1.4m tourists a year, who amble around the famous cellblocks and take selfies against the bars. Until October, if they venture to a derelict building on the island’s north side, they will also encounter giant images of serving and former prisoners.
The show is the result of a five-year effort led by Gregory Sale, an artist based in Arizona who focuses on prison in America. Mr Sale works in the growing field of “social-practice” art, in which artists collaborate with citizens on aesthetic responses to problems. In this case, the goal was to build a bridge between prison and life outside.
Arts organisations are responding to this shift. Players from the Street Symphony in Los Angeles help set former inmates’ poetry to music. In the nearby San Fernando Valley, the Tia Chucha Centro Cultural includes them in its open-mic and theatre performances. Across the country in Chicago, meanwhile, in a programme called Changing Voices, young people who have left the justice system are recasting their experiences as musical theatre for students, judges and legislators.
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