Archives of American Art Presents “Breaking Down Walls: Art as a Portal for the Incarcerated”

Exhibition Will Be on View Sept. 5Jan. 18, 2026

WEBWIRE – Monday, August 4, 2025

The Smithsonians Archives of American Art will present Breaking Down Walls: Art as a Portal for the Incarcerated, an exhibition that showcases two separate prison art projects led by nationally acclaimed artists Lily Yeh (b. 1941) and Emanuel Martinez (b. 1947). The exhibition highlights the role of the arts in creating transformative experiences for inmates and their communities. It will be on view Sept. 5Jan. 18, 2026, in the Fleischman Gallery at the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture in Washington, D.C.

Breaking Down Wallsfeaturesapproximately 50 objects, including correspondence with inmates, documentary footage of artmaking, personal writings, photographs, scrapbooks, exhibition flyers and original works of art from the collections of Martinez and Yeh. It focuses on two prison art projects: the Emanuel Project and the Graterford Prison Project.

In 1986, Yeh founded the Village of the Arts and Humanities in North Philadelphia, whose mission is to build community with youth through neighborhood revitalization. Many Village participants families and friends were imprisoned at Graterford Prison, a state correctional institution near Philadelphia. Yeh redefined her understanding of the community to include inmates imprisoned there. She established the Graterford Prison Project with artists Gerry Givnish and Glenn Holsten in 1998 to facilitate dialogue between the community and Graterford through visual and performance arts workshops. The project culminated in Unimaginable Isolation, a multi-sited exhibition featuring works of art and creative writing by inmates.

Born in Denver, Martinezs career began with his participation in the Chicano Movement, a social and political movement beginning in the late 1960s. As a young artist, Martinez recognized the importance of creating a visual language for the economically and socially disenfranchised. He incorporated these symbols in murals he painted in Denver. Martinez invited neighborhood youth to paint with him, hoping to convey a sense of pride and belonging for their home. As a formerly incarcerated youth, Martinez recognized the positive impact of this participatory model for at-risk youth, and in 2009, he created the Emanuel Project to create murals in juvenile detention centers around the nation.

Breaking Down Walls is arranged into four sections: the development of Martinez and Yehs art practice, the process of working in carceral facilities, the Graterford Prison Project and the Emanuel Project.

Exhibition Programming

The Archives of American Art is organizing two programs to amplify Yeh and Martinezs innovative practice. It will extend Martinezs model of youth collaboration into the gallery by commissioning a mural with youth participation. The Archives will collaborate with the Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization Latin American Youth Center to bring students from its summer employment program, 2nd Nature, to work with Martinez. This program received federal support from the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonians National Museum of the American Latino. Together, Martinez and the students will create a mural inspired by Martinezs collection and his career as an artist. The mural will be featured in the exhibition.

Working collaboratively with the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, the Archives will hold an educators workshop for Washington-based K12 teachers Sept. 13. The workshop will introduce educators across different disciplines to the Archives collections and offer ways to incorporateprimary source materialsintoclassroom teaching materials. The workshops theme is the healing power of the arts for incarcerated communities. Using the exhibition and Yehs collection as an introduction,Smithsonian curators and educatorswill leadworkshop participantsto other collections that prominently feature the theme of incarceration. This includes collections related to the incarceration of Japanese American communities during World War II, such as the work of artist Chiura Obata.To register for the workshop, visit the Eventbrite page. For more information about the Asian Pacific American Center, visit its websiteand follow it on Instagram and Facebook.

About the Archives of American Art

Founded in 1954, the Archives of American Art collects, preserves and makes available primary sources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. The Archives provides access to its collections at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., and through its exhibitions and publications. An international leader in the digitization of archival collections, the Archives makes over 3.5 million digital images freely available online. The oral history collection at the Archives includes more than 2,600 interviews, the largest accumulation of first-person accounts of the American art world.

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