Johnson Gallery’s new exhibition “Finding Hope Within” platforms art that was created within the Vermont carceral system. The exhibit debuted to the public on Oct. 1 and will run until Nov. 14.
Brought to the Middlebury community from A Revolutionary Press, a non-profit collective of artists, the exhibition is a travelling collection which includes drawings, mixed media, poetry and narrative writings by incarcerated artists at two Vermont correctional facilities: Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield and Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington. Additionally, there are pieces featured from the “Art from Guantanamo” collection, which were created by detainees who sought to imagine a world outside of confinement and to evoke memories of home.
A screening series that highlights the experiences of incarcerated individuals opened with “Art and Krimes” on Oct. 17. In the coming weeks, the series will feature films such as “Beyond Bars Restorative Justice,” “Healing in Vermont,” “26.2 to Life” and “Paint Me a Road Out of Here.” There will also be a listening session of an album produced by CHIP, a collective of currently and previously incarcerated people.
On Oct. 21, the gallery welcomed Heather Newcomb of Vermont Works for Women and John Vincent of A Revolutionary Press for a panel discussion, where participants also engaged in a letterpress printing of a poetry broadside.
The exhibition was organized by Director of the Johnson Memorial Building and manager of the gallery Colin Boyd, Annalise Johnson ’25.5, Vincent and Visiting Assistant Professor of History of Art & Architectural Studies Sarah Rogers.
An important component of the exhibition is the collaboration between “inside” and “outside” artists, offering viewers a chance to resonate with the inmates’ humanity.
“Many incarcerated individuals create art as a way for self expression as humans have always done. They recognize that the making of art is transformative and that it can bring about healing, forgiveness, and growth. They would like to be seen as more than the worst thing they have done. We invite viewers to this exhibit to not merely look at the art but to ‘see’ the art and the artists. To ‘see’ something, to really see it, is to understand it and to become conscious of the place from where it comes,” Vincent wrote.
“Finding Hope Within” came to fruition in late 2022, and the Johnson Gallery is the 12th venue for the exhibit, according to Vincent.
“I was asked by teaching artists who work in the Maine Department of Corrections for A Revolutionary Press to design and create letterpress broadsides of poetry by incarcerated artists for an upcoming public exhibition of art from Maine state prisons,” Vincent wrote in an email to The Campus. “Once this was done I considered putting together a similar exhibit to be shown in Vermont. I approached the director of Rokeby Museum in the spring of 2023, who agreed to hold a summer long exhibition of art from correctional facilities in Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts.”
At the conclusion of this inaugural exhibition, A Revolutionary Press returned the art to Maine and Massachusetts and decided to travel the Vermont based artworks to public libraries and other non-profit organizations throughout the state.
Johnson explained that she has been connected with Vincent through A Revolutionary Press for a number of years, and how he suggested adapting the exhibit to join current discussions on campus.
“He had suggested maybe trying to get something at the college from this past exhibit at [The Henry Sheldon Museum] and the works he's had in the libraries in Vermont. He had suggested wanting to kind of gear it towards what's happening here at the college more so and in classes. We had talked to Sarah Rogers, and she is teaching a class this semester on art migration museums. She had wanted, before we even suggested this, to bring this exhibition that has been collected in New York, it's a bunch of art from prisoners in Guantanamo Bay,” Johnson said.
Rogers described how the pieces created by the detainees at Guantanamo are testimonies to the strength of the human spirit and how art has the potential to challenge those in power.
“It is the creation of visual representation when other forms of legal and political representation are systematically denied. Turning loose strings, teabags, and remnants of a crayon and scrap of paper into artworks, these artists reclaim their lives in the small space of creativity,” she wrote in an email to The Campus.
Rogers was introduced to this work when she heard one of the artists, Mansoor Adayfi, speak at a conference on Arab American art last year.
“He is an incredibly powerful speaker whose story highlights the importance of art as a means of witnessing, of survival, and of creating glimmers of hope in the completely cruel and unfathomable conditions for those detained at Guantanamo,” Rogers wrote.
Boyd shared a similar sentiment about the exhibition as a whole. He underlined the importance of bringing these artists into view and recognizing that their experiences are commonly overlooked.
“The part with the carceral system within Vermont, I think, is really quite important. For us here in Middlebury, the campus of Middlebury College is probably the antithesis of a prison in Vermont. So I hope that students and faculty and staff and people who engage with the gallery here can come in and reflect on those kinds of separations that we have physically with these people, but then there's also ways to make connections,” Boyd said.
Maya Alexander ‘26 (she/her) is an Editor at Large.
She is a sociology major and intended French minor from New York City. She loves getting lost in her Pinterest feed and staging spontaneous photoshoots, occasional yoga and a solid iced oat milk maple latte.
