The San Quentin Project: Nigel Poor and the Men of San Quentin State Prison

August 21–November 17, 2019

Following the evolution of artist Nigel Poor’s collaboration with men incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison, this exhibition features visual documents, photographs from the prison’s archive, and episodes of the award-winning podcast Ear Hustle.

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Harold Meeks and Nigel Poor: Gym Profile 7-15-75, 2013; inkjet print with ink notations; 11 x 17 in.; courtesy of Nigel Poor and the San Quentin State Prison Museum, with thanks to Warden Ron Davis and Lieutenant Sam Robinson.
Gym Profile 7-15-75, from the San Quentin State Prison Archive, 1975 (printed 2018 from a black-and-white negative); inkjet print; 16 x 20 in.; courtesy Nigel Poor and the San Quentin State Prison Museum, with thanks to Warden Ron Davis and Lieutenant Sam Robinson.
Mother’s Day 5-9-76, from the San Quentin State Prison Archive, 1976 (printed 2018 from black-and-white negative); inkjet print; 16 x 20 in.; courtesy Nigel Poor and the San Quentin State Prison Museum, with thanks to Warden Ron Davis and Lieutenant Sam Robinson.

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Past Events

Sunday, November 17, 11 AM–7 PM
San Quentin Prison Studio Mail Art Exchange

As part of the exhibition The San Quentin Project: Nigel Poor and the Men of San Quentin State Prison, we celebrate the San Quentin Prison Arts Program by featuring artwork that has been mailed to BAMPFA from the artists at the San Quentin Art Studio.

BAMPFA
Monday, October 28, 6:30 PM
CANCELED: Nigel Poor and Michael Nelson on The San Quentin Project

Artist Nigel Poor presents collaborative projects she has worked on inside San Quentin Prison, including the work on view in The San Quentin Project and the award-winning podcast Ear Hustle; Michael Nelson, whose work is featured in the exhibition, joins her in conversation.

BAMPFA

Canceled
Sunday, October 20, 2 PM; Sunday, November 20, 2 PM
Trace Your Love Line

In conjunction with the exhibition The San Quentin Project, two workshops offer artmaking experiences that draw on somatic and expressive arts therapy to explore resilience.

BAMPFA
Saturday, October 19, 1:30 PM
Colloquium: The San Quentin Project: Narratives of Incarceration

Contextualizing The San Quentin Project, this colloquium brings together UC Berkeley faculty from the fields of law, social welfare, and literature, along with artist Nigel Poor, to discuss the power of personal narrative and how narratives of incarceration have taken shape across disciplines.

BAMPFA

Homecoming Weekend: Plan ahead
Thursday, August 22, noon
Curator's Talk: Lisa Sutcliffe on The San Quentin Project

Join exhibition curator Lisa Sutcliffe for a walkthrough of The San Quentin Project, focusing on artist Nigel Poor’s evolving collaboration with residents of San Quentin State Prison.

BAMPFA

Past Films

The San Quentin Project: Nigel Poor and the Men of San Quentin State Prison

August 21–November 17, 2019

The San Quentin Project: Nigel Poor and the Men of San Quentin State Prison follows the evolution of artist Nigel Poor’s (b. 1963) social art practice and her collaboration with the men incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison in Marin County, California. The exhibition features visual documents made during this collaboration as well as photographs from the prison’s own archive.

In 2011, Poor began volunteering as a professor for the Prison University Project, a nonprofit organization that provides higher education at San Quentin State Prison, a minimum-maximum facility that currently houses more than four thousand men. The San Quentin Project evolved from Poor’s experience teaching visual literacy and the history of photography at the prison. In those courses, she asked her students to complete “mapping exercises,” an activity where the men would react to photographs made by notable artists, formally analyze the images, and creatively explore their meaning. Poor eventually incorporated pictures from the prison’s historical archive into her classes, offering her incarcerated students a chance to respond to, refute, and translate these photographs. The men's distinctive interpretations offer viewers an opportunity to understand more about each individual and how he sees the greater world through the photograph. The San Quentin Project provides a unique opportunity for audiences to consider the role of art and the power of narrative, to discover how images of incarcerated populations have been codified, and to promote critical skills in reading the cultural signs and power structures inherent in visual images.

The exhibition includes nearly thirty mapping exercises that the men of San Quentin made in collaboration with Poor. It also presents photographs from an uncataloged archive of thousands of four-by-five-inch negatives made inside the prison from the 1930s to the 1980s, which Poor was introduced to in 2012. Finally, it features a listening station with select episodes of Ear Hustle, a podcast that evolved out of her courses, which features stories of life inside prison, shared and produced by those living it.

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The San Quentin Project: Nigel Poor and the Men of San Quentin State Prison is organized by the Milwaukee Art Museum. The exhibition is curated by Lisa J. Sutcliffe, Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts at the Milwaukee Art Museum. The BAMPFA presentation is organized by Senior Curator for Asian Art Julia M. White and Associate Curator Stephanie Cannizzo. BAMPFA’s presentation is made possible with major support from the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation as well as generous support from the Present Progressive Fund, Frish Brandt and August Fischer, and Kaitlyn and Mike Krieger.

Supporter

Jonathan Logan Family Foundation

The San Quentin Project: Nigel Poor and the Men of San Quentin State Prison

August 21–November 17, 2019

Past Events

San Quentin Prison Studio Mail Art Exchange

CANCELED: Nigel Poor and Michael Nelson on The San Quentin Project

Trace Your Love Line

Colloquium: The San Quentin Project: Narratives of Incarceration

Curator's Talk: Lisa Sutcliffe on The San Quentin Project

Past Films