Weisman Art Museum presents SEEN, an exhibition created as part of a years-long collaboration with We Are All Criminals (WAAC), curated by WAAC director and founder, Emily Baxter. SEEN features currently incarcerated artists in collaboration with artists, activists, and academics in the Twin Cities community. Together they explore issues of incarceration, isolation, healing, and coming home. Representing a range of cultural, personal, and professional backgrounds and diverse forms of artistic expression, people on the “inside” partnered with people on the “outside” based on shared creative curiosities and personal affinities. This exhibition is arranged across two galleries to evoke the experiences of “inside” (carceral) and “outside” (healing and community). 

The seven installations stretch the bounds of the museum as a site for community engagement and critical examination of American carceral institutions. Teams worked together to better understand and explore carceral isolation and trauma and the many ways it has caused generational harm in their own bodies and those of their descendants. To bring healing to the cycle of harm, the participants connect with their families, the community, and each other through this exhibition. 

We Are All Criminals (WAAC), a nonprofit organization dedicated to challenging society’s perceptions of what it means to be “criminal,” fostered the development and presentation of this exhibition and the larger SEEN project over the past six years. The wider SEEN platform serves as a catalyst for conversations about race, class, privilege, and punishment. One in four people in the United States—and one in four in Minnesota—carries a criminal record, yet four in four have a criminal history. Our criminal legal system disparately targets Black people, Indigenous people, people of color, and people experiencing poverty, resulting in higher rates and weights of criminal records. No small number of individuals and families are affected, and to no small degree: permanent and public criminal records perpetuate inequities in housing, employment, and education, all of which precludes millions of people from countless opportunities to move on and move up. WAAC uses first-person narrative, photography, law, and statistics to humanize and shift the narratives of crime, privilege, policy interpretation and implementation, and redemption.  

The collaborative exhibition SEEN and its related public programs aim to illuminate the effects of mass incarceration by clearing the pathways for people behind bars to have their voices heard, faces seen, and humanity recognized.

Featured artists: B Batchelor and Emily Baxter; Sarith Peou and Carl Flink; Ronald “Bino” Greer II and Diane Willow; Lennell “Fresh” Martin and Erin Sharkey; Von Johnson and D.A. Bullock; Jeffery Young, C Fausto Cabrera, and Korina Barry; and Fong Lee and Kevin Yang.

This exhibition was curated by Emily Baxter—an attorney, activist, photographer, and executive director of We Are All Criminals, which is dedicated to amplifying the voices of those most impacted by the criminal justice system. 

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. General operating support is generously provided by Ameriprise Financial and the Art and Martha Kaemmer Fund of HRK Foundation. Special thanks to the KHR McNeely Family Fund, thanks to Kevin, Rosemary, and Hannah Rose McNeely, for their support of the Weisman's exhibitions and exhibition-related programming.

Image credits: (Top) Graphic courtesy of Weisman Art Museum. (Middle) Lennell “Fresh” Martin and Erin Sharkey, Rootbound (bin detail), 2024. Mixed-media installation. Photo by Rik Sferra, courtesy of Weisman Art Museum. (Bottom) Fong Lee and Kevin Yang While We’re All Still Here (video still), 2024. Mixed media installation. Courtesy of the artists.