Eliana Willis

I’m still quoting a joke that arts philanthropist Agnes Gund made six years ago. Speaking about her Black grandchildren, she mentioned a pillow she has embroidered with the words along the lines of: “If I knew grandchildren were this much fun, I would have had them first.”
The president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art delivered this line at an event at the New York institution inaugurating the Art for Justice Fund, a project of Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors that she generously supports and was created to fight the racist scourge of mass incarceration in America. With just 4.25 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. houses a fifth of the world’s prison inmates at an annual cost of about $81 billion. (Apropos of those grandchildren, Black minors are four times as likely to be incarcerated as their white counterparts.)
Julie Mehretu, Rubber Gloves (2018). Photo by Tom Powel. Courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery and Ford Foundation Gallery.
Now, the exhibition, “No Justice Without Love,” at the Ford Foundation Gallery in New York celebrates the end of the six-year lifespan of the initiative, which focuses on bail reform, sentencing reform, and developing reentry opportunities for the formerly incarcerated.
It features major figures such as Titus Kaphar, Julie Mehretu, and Faith Ringgold, along with artists on the rise like Jesse Krimes and Sherrill Roland, as well as collectives like For Freedoms and the People’s Paper Co-op. Some of the artists, including Krimes and Roland, were formerly incarcerated; Krimes just launched the Center for Art and Advocacy, dedicated to mentoring those formerly incarcerated, with money from the Art for Justice Fund.
Bayete Ross Smith, still from How A White Mob Destroyed a City and Got Away With It, from the Red Summers 2021. Courtesy of the Artist and Ford Foundation Gallery.
Curated by Daisy Desrosiers, director and chief curator at Gund Gallery at Kenyon College, the show includes works that visualize the mass incarceration system and its wide-ranging effects in various ways. 
Some focus on infrastructure, at differing scales. At the show’s entrance, for example, is a video animation by Paul Rucker, Proliferation (2009), that shows the U.S. as if seen from a satellite, with glowing dots of various colors mapping the growth of the prison system, set to Rucker’s music. A 19-foot-tall print by Maria Gaspar reproduces the exterior of Cook County Jail at life size; next to it hangs a minimalist-looking sculpture by Roland that traces the mortar lines between cinder blocks that make up the walls of cells like the one where he spent more than 10 months for a crime he didn’t commit.
Other works address the situation more obliquely: for example, Titus Kaphar’s 2019 painting From a Tropical Space, in which two Black women appear with strollers with white spaces where the children should be, as if stolen from them. Krimes’s quilt Marion (2021), meanwhile, depicts an outdoor scene of the type to which an imprisoned person might wish to return, made partly from used clothing collected from incarcerated people.
The show partly aimed to answer the question, “How do you organize a show about a fund?” In partial answer is a “Call and Response” section, devoted to acknowledgements from cultural practitioners who have received support from the fund, in the form of letters, artworks, audio, and video. After the show closes, it will remain available on Art for Justice’s website.
See more images from the show below.
Jesse Krimes, Marion (2021). Courtesy the artist and Ford Foundation Gallery.
Maria Gaspar, Unblinking Eyes, Awaiting (2023). Courtesy of the artist and Ford Foundation Gallery. Photo by Sebastian Bach.
Sherrill Roland, 168.803 (2021). Courtesy of Tanya Bonakdar Gallery and Ford Foundation Gallery.
The People’s Paper Co-op in collaboration with Kill Joy and PPC Fellows: Faith Bartley, Nashae Cooper, Tinika Hogan, Ivy Johnson, Janaya Pulliam, My Power Within (2021). Courtesy of The People’s Paper Co-op.
Titus Kaphar, From a Tropical Space (2019). Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
“No Justice Without Love” is on view at the Ford Foundation Gallery, 320 E 43rd St, New York, through June 30.

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A dozen drawings by Leonardo da Vinci will be on view in the U.S. for the first time in a show opening this summer in Washington, D.C. They come from the Codex Atlanticus, the largest collection of drawings and writings in Italian by the legendary polymath, which stretches across some 1,200 pages over 12 volumes.  
Leonardo maintained the Codex Atlanticus from 1478 to 1519, the year of his death, and it has been held in Milan’s Biblioteca Ambrosiana since 1637.
An array of subjects are included in the collection, such as botany, flight, mathematics, musical instruments, and weaponry. Engineers and designers have found rich material for their work in its pages. Art historian and Leonardo expert Carlo Pedretti dubbed the codex, which spans the artist’s entire career, the most important of the master’s manuscripts. 
Leonardo da Vinci, Hydraulic pump and fountain within a building. ⓒ Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana/Mondadori Portfolio.
“Imagining the Future—Leonardo da Vinci: In the Mind of an Italian Genius” opens June 21 at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, in Washington, D.C. 
Indicating Leonardo’s great ambition, one drawing explores the concept of perpetual motion without an external energy source, along with imaginative architectural studies. Another sheet testifies to the artist’s interest in underwater exploration, showing concepts for diving machines as well as water pumps. Another contains detailed diagrams and calculations exploring mathematical principles, such as the golden ratio, in their application to art and architecture.
Some drawings in the show can be tied to modern mechanisms, the organizers point out: Leonardo’s study for a digging machine provided inspiration for the excavating machines of today; his design for a self-propelling cart has echoes in our self-driving vehicles; and his diving apparatus influenced underwater exploration.
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Is it possible that the secret to successful public art is commissioning artists who don’t ordinarily make it?
That can roughly be described as the philosophy of Jacob King, the art advisor at the center of a new dual presentation of works by Charles Ray and Christopher Wool at the eight-acre commercial complex Manhattan West, owned and developed by Brookfield Properties.
“My whole pitch to Brookfield from the beginning was that if you’re going to be doing commissions with artists for public places, I think it’s really important to work with artists that don’t do a lot of these,” King told Artnet News. “There’s a lot of great artists that do a lot of work in lobbies but when you put an artist in a lobby that people expect to see there, they often just ignore it. I think it’s much more challenging, but also much more rewarding, to try to work with artists who haven’t done works in this context before.”
On June 5, the sculptor Charles Ray unveiled two stainless-steel, larger-than-life figures, titled Adam and Eve (2023), on the steps outside of the Manhattan West site. Hanging in the adjacent lobby is painter Christopher Wool’s monumental 28-by-39-foot mosaic made of Venetian stone and glass, which is visible from the street through large glass windows.
Detail of Charles Ray, Adam and Eve (2023) at Manhattan West. Photo by Timothy Schenck.
King, who has advised Brookfield on art for the past seven years, said that he thought Ray and Wool, stars of the contemporary art world, would be long shots for the commissions. But when he approached Ray a few years ago, the artist immediately agreed.
Ray said that the pandemic affected his approach to the sculpture, as did his own injuries, including a broken neck sustained during a recent car accident.
“At the same time, I was reading the Lost Books of Eden and a history of Adam and Eve,” Ray told Artnet News during an unveiling celebration. “As I was reading and thinking about it at the the height of the pandemic, older people were dying and it was horrible.”
The resulting work depicts an elderly man and woman, rendered in the artist’s signature stainless steel in a larger-than-life scale. “I’m very interested in this location and the civic quality,” Ray said. “I know they have to interact with the vitality. They had to look out, but not compete with the buildings, and hold their own.”
Installation view of Christopher Wool, Crosstown Traffic (2023). Photo by Timothy Schenck.
Wool’s mosaic, the aptly titled Crosstown Traffic (2023), marks the first time the artist has accepted a public commission. “It was such an exciting idea, to be invited and considered,” Wool said at the event.
It also marks the first time the artist—best known for his wry black-and-white text paintings and abstract canvases—has worked in the medium. “The challenge was the scale,” he said. “I had worked with silkscreen, which has allowed me to enlarge images, and right away I started thinking about different ways of blowing something up. Mosaic seemed perfect.”
Wool based the mosaic, with its swirls of red and black lines against a dark, cloud-like abstraction, on a drawing. “The drawing took a day and figuring out the mosaic took a month,” he said, plus another four months to fabricate it. (Artisan Fabrizio Travisanutto in Spilimbergo, Italy, just north of Venice, took “what little I said and went with it.”)
The finished work is comprised of 140 32-square-foot panels, interlocking pieces that were put together on scaffolding.
Artist Charles Ray at the unveiling of Adam and Eve (2023) at Manhattan West. Photo by Eileen Kinsella.
Sabrina Kanner, head of development, design, and construction for Brookfield Properties, said that the company saw the Manhattan West site as an “ideal place” for art.
“If you look at the topography of the site, the way the grade sort of falls away as you’re going downtown, the grade of the plaza and this public areas created sort of a perch where you could easily see art as you’re driving down Ninth Avenue or as you’re coming across from Moynihan station,” Kanner told Artnet News.
L to R: Artist Christopher Wool, Sabrina Kanner and Jacob King at the unveiling of Crosstown Traffic (2023) at Manhattan West. Photo by Eileen Kinsella.
“So while we had not at that point identified what the work would be,  we had committed to having a major piece of work there.”
“I give Brookfield so much credit,” added King. “They’re will to take risks. If you’re not willing to take a bit of a risk, you’re never going to end up with a really great artwork.”
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Something radical is taking place at the Noguchi Museum in Queens. Gallery attendants, curators, project managers, handlers, educators, and registrars have taken over to stage an onsite exhibition of staff artworks. What’s more, they’re getting paid to do so.
To say the more than two dozen works on show at “A Living Mechanism,” ranging from paintings to experimental installations to intricate sculptures, are good seems a disservice, as if to ignore the well-known reality that American museums are staffed full of jobbing, hopeful artists (indeed, most everyone on display here holds an arts MFA). But yes, the works are strong and as diverse in scope and subject as the individuals who make the Noguchi tick.
It’s certainly a show art institution laborers deserve. Amid the George Floyd Protests of 2020 with many museums enduring lockdowns, institutions affixed socially conscious statements to their websites and beamed out Zoom seminars on matters of inclusivity and equity. Change was coming. Gatekeepers, it seemed, might loosen their grip.
Not that “A Living Mechanism” is some good will gesture from on high. It was negotiated and fought for by the museum’s Anti-Oppression Committee, a process co-curator Orlando Lacro said proved shockingly successful. “I have never heard of a museum paying participants to do a staff show,” Lacro told Artnet News. “It’s not a performative gesture by the museum; it was a gallery attendant project, fought for by gallery attendants. We were handed a budget with no strings attached, full creative and logistical control. It’s an example of how the staff makes the museum what it is.”
The show’s name not only speaks to the collaborative manner in which it was conceived and executed, but also the spirit in which Isamu Noguchi worked. From Greenwich Village to the hamlet of Mure in Shikoku, Japan, Noguchi was forever in search of collaborators—indeed, the museum held a focused exhibition on the subject in 2010. Shamysia Waterman, the show’s co-curator, said Noguchi’s ability to connect with a wide range of people explains the diversity of the art and its appeal.
“’A Living Mechanism’ harnesses Noguchi’s ethos of relying on every part of space in order to create a harmonious environment,” Waterman said. “His essence lives on.”
Here are five artists on display at the Noguchi Museum.

Harumi Ori, I am Here @ Green St & Spring St, New York, NY (2021)
Harumi Ori, I Am Here at Green St and Spring St New York NY (2021). Photo courtesy the Noguchi Museum.
In New York, orange is the color of steam cones, a portion of the city flag, a dubious slice of pizza. But in Japan, the color is sacred and for the past two decades, Ori has been playing with this contrast. In sparse yet detailed works, she repurposes orange industrial mesh to capture single moments on New York streets. “The connections between individuals and groups, and the landscapes they pass through and share are revealed,” Ori said. “It is the beauty of these relationships that I wish to express.”

Shinsuke Aso, Getting out of a rut (2023)
Shinsuke Aso, Getting out of a rut (2023). Photo courtesy the Noguchi Museum.
Aso has an eye for photographing the humorous side of everyday objects. His collage works are equally playful and bring together discarded objects in pieces that ask viewers “open-ended questions.” Getting out of a rut places a watch, an oversized playing card, and a plastic hanger on sections of acrylic paper—objects all found onsite at the museum, where the Japan-born artist works as a shop associate.

Jared Friedman, Withdrawal (Automated Teller Machine 1) (2023)
Jared Friedman, Withdrawal Automated Teller Machine I (2023). Photo courtesy The Noguchi Museum.
Forget the city’s postcard architectures; Friedman focuses on the curious shapes of the small, the overlooked, the boringly familiar. On canvas, rug, and astroturf he paints ubiquitous toilet cubicles, white cardboard takeaway boxes, four leaf tile vents. The hope, he said, is to question our sentimentality. It’s easy to picture the bodega street corner onto which his grotty ATM machine is fixed, its blue screen light luring, its stickers illegible.

Johnathan Glass, Jim Ridl Trio at Deer Head Inn (2022)
Jonathan Glass, Jim Ridl Trio at Deer Head Inn (2022). Photo courtesy The Noguchi Museum.
Glass is a particular sort of jazz aficionado. He knows his way around the club circuit (Village Vanguard is his favorite) and boasts a tasteful collection of records, but what he loves best are the frenetic pen and ink drawings he sketches in real time at shows. For Glass, capturing sound means mimicking the movements of the musicians themselves. It’s all there, the straggles of hair, the concerted expressions, the eye contact, the wobbling strings. Here, he shows two works: Robert Glasper’s Dinner Party and Jim Ridl Trio at Deer Head Inn.

Yali Romagoza, Pain of Cuba, Body I am (2022)
Yali Romagoza, Pain of Cuba Body I am (2022). Photo courtesy Noguchi Museum.
The Cuban-born interdisciplinary artist Yali Romagoza has an alter-ego and at the Noguchi Museum, it’s laying on a bed of sand staring at the ceiling. Above it, the sounds of lapsing water and poetry accompany a video projection of a restless body awash on a darkened shore. It’s Romagoza’s response to the disorientation she has experienced since moving the U.S. in 2011 and the enduring longing she feels for home.
“A Living Mechanism: The Noguchi Museum Staff Exhibition” is on view at the Noguchi Museum, 9-01 33rd Road, Queens, New York, through June 15.
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