Faith Ringgold Mural at Rikers Island to Move to Brooklyn Museum

In 2019, the painter Faith Ringgold traveled to Rikers Island so that she could see how her first public art commission, a 1972 mural called “For the Women’s House,” was faring. It wasn’t good enough, she decided. The artist, now 91, continued her quiet campaign to see her work. It was hidden behind plexiglass in a hallway where few could see. She moved it to the Brooklyn Museum.

Tuesday was her day. Officials granted her request. The Public Design Commission granted permission to loan the vibrant work of Department of Corrections to the Public Design Commission for a long-term. museum. It was Mayor Bill de Blasio’s request in the final days his administration that the mural be lent out to the cultural institution.

“I feel that there has been a careful effort to ensure that this is being placed and loaned to an institution that already acknowledges the great work of this artist,” said Signe Nielsen, president of the design commission. “We are all going to breathe better knowing this piece is in an accessible location.”

“That’s absolutely wonderful,” Ringgold said in a phone interview. “Nobody could see it before.”

One of the most influential living American artists, known for her “story quilts” and her ardent activism, Ringgold had received a $3,000 grant from the city in 1971 for her mural, which she based on conversations with inmates at the Correctional Institution for Women on Rikers Island. It depicts women in a variety of careers that inmates believed were impossible: president, minister, professional basketball player, and construction worker.Ringgold was also arrested and charged with desecration of the American flag at an exhibit she curated at Judson Church in Greenwich Village a year earlier.

When the Rikers facility began housing men in 1988, Ringgold’s painting became a target of attacks and it was whitewashed before a corrections officer stepped in to save it. The piece was restored and relocated to a new women’s facility called the Rose M. Singer Center, which, like the rest of Rikers Island, is scheduled to close permanently by 2027. Nearly a decade back, the painting was placed in the gym, high above basketball hoops and hidden behind plexiglass. It was later moved to a long hallway within the facility.

“The Brooklyn Museum is thrilled to have one of Faith Ringgold’s most iconic paintings return to our care,” Anne Pasternak, director of the Brooklyn Museum, said in a statement. “We are excited to share it with millions of people locally and around the globe and engage them in dialogues about this groundbreaking artist’s work and themes of mass incarceration.”

In 2017, Ringgold’s mural was displayed for the museum’s landmark exhibition, “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85,” exploring the achievements of Black female artists, before touring the country with the show. Pasternak called the work “one of the most reproduced and discussed paintings” in the exhibition. Referring to the museum’s continuing commitment to talking about incarceration, the director added, “This will be a seminal work to discuss how things have radically changed from the 1970s to this present moment.”

Ringgold claimed that she tried for close to a decade for the painting to be moved, but failed to make a deal with at most one university due to the cost of the insurance.

What sealed the deal with the Brooklyn Museum, Ringgold said, was the influence of the philanthropist Agnes Gund, whose nonprofit organization, the Art for Justice Fund, has offered to back the creation of a new community mural to replace the artist’s work at Rikers.

On Tuesday, the Brooklyn Museum said that once the loan is finalized, it would send the mural to the New Museum, which opens its major survey, “Faith Ringgold: American People,” on Feb. 17, so the work can be seen by the public.

The plan is not supported by everyone. Some preservationists and art historians criticised the decision to transfer the work to a private institution, claiming that the city is incapable of caring for its own art collection.

“It troubles me that the city is embarking on this kind of enterprise again,” said Michele H. Bogart, an art historian specializing in the city’s public works. “And I just keep wondering whether they are doing a disservice to the people who are still in Rikers.”

In the past ten years, many public artworks and monuments were moved into private institutions. In November, for example, the city moved its Thomas Jefferson statue to the New-York Historical Society after many City Council members objected to Jefferson’s legacy as an enslaver.