Amid art galleries and bustling brunch spots near Spring Street Station in Manhattan’s trendy Nolita neighborhood, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) presents the bloated budget of the police department of New York (NYPD)— $11 billion per year, or $29 million per day.
This is the second time the advocacy organization has featured an exhibit in its pop-up Museum of broken windows; the first was in 2018. The current show, titled Twenty-nine million dreamsruns until May 6.
The name of the museum refers to the “broken windows theory», a police strategy developed in the 1970s. The concept is based on the idea that petty crime will lead to larger crimes; that if people in a neighborhood observe minor criminal acts happening around them – drug use or graffiti, for example – citizens will perceive their community as neglected and this will lead to greater criminal activity. Although the concept has yet to be proven, it has been applied to neighborhoods and cities with disastrous results (Mayor Rudy Giuliani implemented it in New York in the early 1990s). When the “broken windows theory” is put into practice, police departments do not focus on stopping major crimes and instead attack individuals at street level, persecuting people including drug addicts, artists street workers and sex workers.
The theory creates policing methods that persecute poor communities and provides a pseudo-scientific framework for race-based policing.
“When we were designing this exhibit, we knew we were looking for artwork that spoke to the heaviness and seriousness – the weight – of excessive font,” said Daveen Trentman, who co-curated the exhibit at the alongside Terrick Gutierrez, in an interview with Hyperallergic. “But also works of art that truly enhance the beauty of people and community and present an affirmative view of a world that doesn’t rely on the police to solve all of our problems.”
The ground floor of Twenty-nine million dreams uses text, infographics, old newspaper articles and illustrations to communicate the issue with extreme clarity.
City politics often appears in the public consciousness as seemingly endless, tedious, and confusing, but the series explains the urgency of these conversations. Currently, the city council and the mayor’s office are in negotiations on the municipal budget, which allocates funds to the NYPD. Funding for libraries and other services is under threat, and an infographic on the stairs shows the city’s money split against the police budget, which continues to grow.
Trentman said the exhibit floor is meant to show the seriousness and human consequences of the policies being discussed.
“As we talk about things like how much we spend and what kind of policies we need, we really want to remind people that these things have serious, sometimes deadly consequences,” Trentman said.
Images of Breonna Taylor and others killed by police are scattered throughout this first floor. Text printed at the bottom of the space explains the seriousness of the crisis at Rikers Island – 17 people died there last year, the highest number recorded in its 90-year history. The 20-by-34-foot “Rikers Quilt” by artist Jesse Krimes (2020) literally reveals the horrors inside the massive prison.
Krimes’ work includes 3,650 individual squares to represent each day of Mayor Bill de Blasio promise 2017 close the prison in 10 years. Calendar dates are printed at the top. The colorful work, made with bed sheets issued by the prison, extends from the ceiling of the vast gallery to the floor.
“Jesse’s beauty theory is that as humans, we are drawn to vibrant colors and things that are visually pleasing to the eye,” Trentman said. Krimes was formerly incarcerated at Rikers.
“But as you get pulled in, it created a second layer,” Trentman continued. The outer part is intended to be open, although only a few squares have been so far. Documented photographs of abuse at Rikers lie beneath the quilt’s bright facade.
A work created by co-curator Gutierrez depicts an NYPD searchlight. Mayor Bill de Blasio sent hundreds of these machines to public housing projects as part of a campaign to end nighttime crime. They always light up these spaces. (The initiative was incredibly named “Omnipresence. »
“These shine in the homes of families and the elderly and are really harmful,” Trentman said. Guitierrez replaced the projector’s serial number with its Kelvin temperature. Anything over 3000 is considered harmful to the human eye, but the projector shows close to 4000.
Upstairs, Trentman and Gutierrez created a space “designed to be an almost visceral tonal shift,” according to Trentman. Natural light illuminates a space filled with greenery and plants. The works of art on its walls celebrate individuals and communities. These works include a series of photographs taken in 2018 by artist Andre Wagner of people in Bushwick and images by Steven Eloiseau and Eva Woolridge that depict a father and son and the hand of Woolridge’s mother.
Just as featured in the works one floor below, the art upstairs also exhibits active resistance. A two-part series by Susan Chen, for example, celebrates Manhattan’s Chinatown and documents collective organizing in response to the Chinatown project. mega-jail. A three-part series of photographs by Gabriel Chiu features a picket line in Chinatown while exploring concepts of poverty and gentrification.
“All work on the second floor showcases the beauty of people or communities,” Trentman said. “And really shows what a world could look like if we weren’t so dependent on the police.”
