Given the current political leadership that wants to see the entire country behind walls to keep America safe, the exhibit “INCARCERATION" is timely and thought provoking on many levels. Videos and images ask us to reflect on the human lives affected to deal with the nation’s growing “lock ‘em up” mentality. We may at this point be prepared to encounter the blank faces of men and women behind bars that this exhibit offers, or to accept without question the numerous facts about the race of those who read to get locked up. Still, the campy black humor of Mariona Barkus’ black and white posters, which tout prisons as lucrative business opportunities, offers a welcome insight and added perspective. But it is the photographs of tiny children alone in huge jail cells, and the videos of judges and those charged with administering the U.S. criminal justice system that offer us the most poignant, and in some ways most unexpected reminder about the costs of incarceration. In a society supported by a culture of fear-mongering, it has become a courageous act for everyone who is willing to think past punishment to useful lives, and willing to protect goodness and humanity as key social values
