Lifestyle
A prison art show at Lincoln's Cottage critiques presidents' penal law past
The Prison Reimagined: Presidential Portrait Project exhibition features artwork by incarcerated artists critiquing the U.S. justice system and is on display at President Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington, D.C.
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The Prison Reimagined: Presidential Portrait Project exhibition features artwork by incarcerated artists critiquing the U.S. justice system and is on display at President Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington, D.C.
Catie Dull/NPR
Caddell Kivett was watching the inauguration of President Biden on Jan. 20, 2021, when the thread of an idea began to form.
He was inspired by Amanda Gorman, who took the podium and read her poem The Hill We Climb, which says, in part:
“We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what ‘just’ is isn’t always justice. …”
It was then that he really started thinking, Kivett told NPR.
“Some of the words of that poem just really touched how I feel about our country,” he said.
And those feelings are complicated, to say the least.
Kivett, 53, is serving an 80-year prison sentence for assault-related charges.
He’s spent about 14 years incarcerated in North Carolina at the mercy of the U.S. criminal justice system and policies established by U.S. presidents, including Biden.
When the inauguration ceremony concluded, Kivett returned to his cell at Nash Correctional Institution in Nashville, N.C., where he’s been for the past eight years. He began to mull over a “kind of improbable idea” as the words of Gorman’s poem, “The norms and notions of what ‘just’ is isn’t always justice,” cycled through his mind.
He said he considered: What if there was a way to harness the voices of the incarcerated to critique this so-called justice system and to challenge the idea of what true justice in America could look like?
“Most people on the outside don’t know what is going on in here,” Kivett said. “And so, we just accept that this is how things are to be done and the correct response to people who commit harms or violence is to just lock them away.”
Caddell Kivett’s brainchild, Prison Reimagined: Presidential Portrait Project, launched at President Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington, D.C., this month.
Tracey Thornton/Janie Ritter
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He is surrounded by artists at Nash Correctional and considered ways to take that talent and use it to push forward these questions and ideas, he said.
These thoughts that started as just a flicker in his mind in 2021 took years and complex coordination with advocates from Justice Arts Coalition, such as founder and director Wendy Jason and programs assistant Janie Ritter, to come to fruition. But this month Kivett’s brainchild, an exhibit titled Prison Reimagined: Presidential Portrait Project, was revealed to the public at President Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington, D.C.
The exhibit of 46 pieces of art and writing was curated by the Committee of Incarcerated Writers and Artists, whose members all currently live within the carceral system across the U.S. In addition to Justice Arts Coalition, a group that supports imprisoned artists, the exhibit was coordinated by staff at Lincoln’s Cottage.
The exhibit, which costs visitors between $4 and $10, will continue through Feb. 19. It may later head to a few more venues but that’s yet to be confirmed. The pieces, however, can be bought once the current exhibit has finished with all proceeds going directly to the artists.
The art pieces include different takes on portraits of U.S. presidents, among them Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and put these leaders’ records on criminal justice under the microscope.
The exhibition focuses on various presidents, including Presidents Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Joe Biden (bottom left) and Richard Nixon.
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The exhibition focuses on various presidents, including Presidents Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Joe Biden (bottom left) and Richard Nixon.
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The difficulties of coordinating the exhibit from behind bars
Wendy Jason is the founder and director of the Justice Arts Coalition in Takoma Park, Md.
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Wendy Jason is the founder and director of the Justice Arts Coalition in Takoma Park, Md.
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From the moment Kivett reached out to the Justice Arts Coalition in early 2021, the wheels started turning, even if slowly, and not without some hurdles. Ritter, nonetheless, worked to ensure that Kivett kept agency over the project.
“It was his idea. I wanted him to make the decisions,” she said. “And, of course, a lot of the decisions couldn’t be made from inside. They had to be facilitated outside.”
Discussing the framework of the project with one another was among the challenges because Kivett has limited ability to call or email from his cell. And the artists whom Ritter and Jason contacted to contribute to the project are located in prisons throughout the country and rely heavily on snail mail to correspond.
Watercolor paintings, mixed media collages and colored pencil portraits are now hanging in Lincoln’s Cottage.
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Watercolor paintings, mixed media collages and colored pencil portraits are now hanging in Lincoln’s Cottage.
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Gradually, the artists began sending in their work to the group’s headquarters in Takoma Park, Md.
To get these works to Kivett and his Committee of Incarcerated Artists and Writers at Nash, who were selecting the best pieces to exhibit, Ritter had to send 8-and-a-half-by-11 sized photos of all of each piece and copies of the written submissions.
“At the same time, our mail system here was going under a transformation from paper to digital, which created a whole new slew of hurdles for us to get past,” Kivett said.
Later on, Callie Hawkins, the executive director of Lincoln’s Cottage, sent a copy of their floor plan to guide the committee in choosing where to display each piece.
“It’s a massive space,” Hawkins said. “I was blown away by their ideas for placement and groupings. And literally all our team did was place it on the wall where they directed us to.”
Janie Ritter is the programs assistant for Justice Arts Coalition. She wanted to ensure Kivett kept agency over the exhibition.
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Janie Ritter is the programs assistant for Justice Arts Coalition. She wanted to ensure Kivett kept agency over the exhibition.
Catie Dull/NPR
Kivett said it was hard not to feel discouraged during the process.
But, he said, “This project is a testament to what can be accomplished if you don’t let discouragement stop your momentum.”
Kivett hopes as visitors come to view the exhibit that they leave with a deeper understanding of the direct impacts of mass incarceration to critique the idea of whether incarceration is the true path to justice and that they’re motivated to take concerns directly to their politicians to make change.
“I hope everyone realizes that they’re all stakeholders. And I want them to realize what their individual part is in this process. And I hope they leave our show charged to do their part,” Kivett said.
“Continuing to just cage people for harms committed in our country is not making us safer and not making us better as a nation,” he said.
He recommends rerouting money that is being put into prisons and jails into communities that need it the most rather than continuing to invest in the carceral system as it is now.
President Lincoln’s Cottage offers a poignant venue
A portrait of President Bill Clinton and a collage of drawings of President George W. Bush are on display at Lincoln’s Cottage.
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A portrait of President Bill Clinton and a collage of drawings of President George W. Bush are on display at Lincoln’s Cottage.
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Watercolor paintings, mixed media collages and colored pencil portraits are now hanging in Lincoln’s Cottage in what was the president’s former library, dining room and bedroom some 160 years ago.
Some of the pieces are of Lincoln himself.
A mixed media collage created by Robert Spence incorporates photos of Black Lives Matters protests surrounding a portrait of Lincoln. Spence writes of this piece, “There are so many hidden (and not so hidden) racial biases and struggles that still exist in America. I wonder what President Lincoln would say if he was alive today. ‘What happened to America?’ “
Other pieces target Lincoln’s more recent successors.
The works reflect on how each administration and the policies they signed into law have impacted prisoners and contributed to the current state of the U.S. criminal justice system, which has locked up almost 2 million people — a disproportionate number of whom are Black Americans.
A mixed media work featuring a portrait of President Abraham Lincoln is on display at the exhibition.
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A mixed media work featuring a portrait of President Abraham Lincoln is on display at the exhibition.
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Like former President Bill Clinton and his signing of the 1994 Crime Bill. Critics of this bill have said it is responsible for this mass incarceration of Black Americans.
Artist Mike Tran used this event to inspire his painting on Clinton.
Tran writes, “The 3 Strikes Law (the 1994 Crime Bill), designed as a crime deterrent, serves to prove how inadequate the ‘rehabilitation’ system is. Rehabilitation is not putting a person in a box for life. It is helping that person realize why they did what they did, who they harmed with their actions, and replacing those behaviors with prosocial thoughts and beliefs.”
Tran painted a skewed version of Clinton’s presidential portrait, writing:
“I wanted to weave these ideas into President Clinton’s portrait, as he was instrumental in the passing of this law. I wanted the symbolism in the piece to be subtle, hence the three small cigars on his collar and intentional blurring of the American Flag, but once you realize them, you can’t look away.”
Not all pieces put the presidents in a seemingly negative light.
In a portrait by Brian Hindson, he contemplates on his complex feelings about Trump, who signed the First Step Act into law in 2018. This law, among many other things, lowered prison sentences for certain nonviolent offenders.
Hindson, who at the time of finishing his painting spent 15 years in the federal prison system, writes after that law passed he saw that “people were leaving in droves” and that overcrowding in the federal prison system “was actually being addressed.”
That leaves Hindson with contradictory feelings about Trump. He painted Trump’s face split and divided into different pieces, each painted a different color.
“As controversial, polarizing, and divisive as Trump was and can be, he’s the only President that did something that benefitted every federal inmate. The style I picked was my fractured art. All the pieces make him up. All the bad stuff too. Much like all of us, it’s pieces of us. All the pieces make the whole,” Hindson wrote.
A six-panel installation by artists Yuri Kadamov, Aquilla Barnette and Lezmond Mitchell depicts President Barack Obama.
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A six-panel installation by artists Yuri Kadamov, Aquilla Barnette and Lezmond Mitchell depicts President Barack Obama.
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The exhibit’s largest piece is a 72-by-40-inch, six-panel installation that hangs in the center of the cottage’s sitting room wall.
It’s an eye-catching portrait with an even more striking story.
The subject of the piece is obvious: former President Obama. Except his face is distorted with puzzle pieces missing from his face.
It reflects the three artists’ broken hopes of Obama reforming the criminal justice system and granting clemency to men on death row — a dream of the three men who painted it, they wrote.
The artists, Yuri Kadamov, Aquilla Barnette, and Lezmond Mitchell, managed to work together on this piece without ever sharing the same space. The three men slid canvases under the steel doors of their cells and handed it off to a fellow inmate who would pass the work on to the next collaborator.
The piece, however, was never fully finished.
Mitchell, who was the only Native American on federal death row, was executed on Aug. 26, 2020, at the age of 38 for first-degree murder.
Callie Hawkins is the executive director at President Lincoln’s Cottage. Her team worked with Kivett on arranging and hanging the artwork in the president’s former library, dining room and bedroom.
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Callie Hawkins is the executive director at President Lincoln’s Cottage. Her team worked with Kivett on arranging and hanging the artwork in the president’s former library, dining room and bedroom.
Catie Dull/NPR
It’s significant given that this incomplete portrait sits in a building that represents what Hawkins calls “that unfinished work” of Lincoln’s legacy.
“[Lincoln] recognized in his own lifetime, that his role was just to push the boulder a little further up the hill, and there he was going to fall short, that others who came after him were going to fall short,” she said. “And then it was going to take everyone to continue this ideal, this promise.”
The site of the cottage is at the highest point of Washington, D.C. It was the seasonal home of the 16th president and his family. While at the cottage in 1862 (then called the Soldiers Home), Lincoln developed the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in an upstairs bedroom, Hawkins said.
This was “legally supposed to free slaves in America,” Ritter said.
“Mass incarceration in the U.S. has been referred to as the New Jim Crow. I think it’s such an interesting tension to have artwork created by folks who are still inside, who do slave labor, in the room where Lincoln quite literally wrote out his thoughts for freeing those people in America,” she said.
The Proclamation was enshrined in the 13th Amendment by 1865. It says that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
A portrait of President Abraham Lincoln sits on a mantel at Lincoln’s Cottage.
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A portrait of President Abraham Lincoln sits on a mantel at Lincoln’s Cottage.
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Kivett said this amendment provides this “loophole” for those convicted of a crime. He said involuntary servitude is still legal for convicted felons, who when incarcerated, are forced into work that pays little to nothing in prisons across the country.
Hawkins said it was important for the cottage to be a part of this exhibit as it offered an important point to hold important conversations around rectifying injustice — a goal of the museum.
“It’s really important to [Lincoln’s Cottage] to not put Lincoln on a pedestal. To take him down, to interrogate him, his policies, and to really be honest about where that leaves us today,” she said.
For Kivett, the project and its themes are the embodiment of years of focus and passion on social justice issues while in prison.
It’s part of what gives him purpose and goals for the future while inside, he said.
“The big picture of the project is to let people on the outside know that we are still people, and that we are still connected somehow in our humanity.”
Lifestyle
Britney Spears Open to Treatment Plan as Team Weighs Options
Britney Spears
Open to Treatment Plan After DUI Arrest, Source Says
Published
Britney Spears‘ team is hoping the judge mandates treatment for the pop star over jail time following her Wednesday DUI arrest … and Britney isn’t fighting them on that, TMZ has learned.
Sources familiar with the situation tell TMZ … Britney is willing to comply with a treatment and support plan.
We’re told her team is in the early stages of developing a plan and they’re exploring multiple options, including mental health services, detox, and dual-diagnosis programs.
It’s unclear whether she would do inpatient or outpatient treatment, and it’s also unclear whether she would enter treatment before her May 4 court date.
Broadcastify.com
We broke the story … Britney was pulled over by California Highway Patrol officers around 9:30 PM Wednesday in Westlake Village, CA, not far from her home. She was later taken to a hospital — not for any injuries, because we’re told she didn’t sustain any — but to draw her blood to determine her blood alcohol content.
According to CHP, she was arrested for “driving under the influence of a combination of drugs and alcohol.”
Sources familiar with the investigation told us an unknown substance was found in Britney’s car, which was sent to be tested.
Britney’s manager, Cade Hudson, previously told TMZ … “This was an unfortunate and inexcusable incident. Britney will take the right steps, comply with the law, and we hope this marks the start of long-overdue change in her life. She needs help and support during this difficult time. Her boys will be spending time with her, and her loved ones are putting a plan in place to set her up for success and well-being.”
Lifestyle
If you loved ‘Sinners,’ here’s what to watch next
Michael B. Jordan plays twin brothers Smoke and Stack in Sinners.
Warner Bros. Pictures
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Warner Bros. Pictures
Ryan Coogler’s supernatural horror stars Michael B. Jordan playing twin brothers who open a 1930s juke joint in Mississippi. Opening night does not go as planned when vampires appear outside. “In a straightforward metaphor for all the ways Black culture has been co-opted by whiteness, the raucous pleasures and sonic beauty of the juke joint attract the interest of a trio of demons … they wish to literally leech off of the talents and energy of Black folks,” writes critic Aisha Harris. The film made history with a record 16 Academy Award nominations.


We asked our NPR audience: What movie would you recommend to someone who loved Sinners? Here’s what you told us:
Near Dark (1987)
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow; starring Adrian Pasdar, Jenny Wright, Lance Henriksen
If you want another cool vampire movie with Western kind of vibes, check out Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark — super underseen and kind of hard to find, but really gritty and sexy and another very different take on what you might think is a genre that had been wrung dry. – Maggie Grossman, Chicago, Ill.
30 Days of Night (2007)
Directed by David Slade; starring Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Danny Huston
It follows a group of people in a small Alaskan town as they struggle to survive an invasion of vampires who have taken advantage of the month-long absence of the sun. Both this and Sinners revolve around a vampire takeover and the people’s fight to outlast the “night.” – Nathan Strzelewicz, DeWitt, Mich.
The Wailing (2016)
Directed by Na Hong-jin; starring Kwak Do-won, Hwang Jung-min, Chun Woo-hee, Jun Kunimura
In this South Korean supernatural horror film, a mysterious illness causes people in a quiet rural village to become violent and murderous. A local police officer investigates while trying to save his daughter, who begins showing the same disturbing symptoms. The film blends folk horror, religion, and psychological dread, exploring themes of faith, evil, and moral weakness. Like Sinners, it centers on a supernatural force corrupting a close-knit community, builds slow-burning tension, and examines spiritual conflict and human frailty. – Amy Merke, Bronx, N.Y.
Fréwaka (2024)
Directed by Aislinn Clarke; starring Bríd Ní Neachtain, Clare Monnelly, Aleksandra Bystrzhitskaya
In this Irish folk horror film, a home care worker, Shoo, is assigned to stay with an elderly woman who’s convinced she’s under siege by malevolent fairies. Like Sinners, Fréwaka blends folk traditions and social commentary with horror. The social failures Shoo copes with (untreated mental health issues, religious abuse) are just as frightening as the supernatural forces. – Kerrin Smith, Baltimore, Md.
And a bonus pick from our critic:
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020)
Directed by George C. Wolfe; starring Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Glynn Turman
This is an adaptation of August Wilson’s play about a legendary blues singer (Viola Davis) muscling through a recording session with white producers who want to control her music. Chadwick Boseman’s blistering in his final role. – Bob Mondello, NPR movie critic
Carly Rubin and Ivy Buck contributed to this project. It was edited by Clare Lombardo.
Lifestyle
Solar energy for renters has taken off in 10 states. Not in California
The tiny town of West Goshen, Calif., was exactly the kind of place that community solar was designed for.
Near Visalia, most of its 500 residents live in mobile homes, where companies won’t install rooftop panels without a solid foundation. And until recently, they used propane for heating and cooking, with price fluctuations in the winter posing hardships for low-income families.
Community solar, in which residents get a discount on their bills for subscribing as a group to small solar arrays nearby, was designed to help low-income residents, apartment dwellers, renters and others who can’t put panels on their own roofs.
Over the last 11 years, New York, Maine, Minnesota, Massachusetts and other states have built thriving community solar programs. But California has built, at most, only 34 projects since 2015, and experts say that’s a generous accounting.
“We’ve had community solar for a dozen years, and it simply has not produced anything of scale and anything of note,” said Derek Chernow, director of Californians for Local, Affordable Solar and Storage, a developer trade group that’s pushing to get a more robust program off the ground. “Projects don’t pencil out.”
The West Goshen residents were among the lucky few, becoming part of a community solar project in 2024.
“It has kind of allowed us to kind of breathe a little bit,” said resident and community organizer Melinda Metheney. Her bill has dropped by about $300 in the summer months, thanks to the 20% community solar discount, stacked with other low-income discounts and clean energy incentives, she said.
West Goshen’s panels sit about 10 miles out of town, in a field surrounded by farms. Energy and climate experts agree California must add much more clean energy to its grid, some 6 gigawatts by 2032, the California Public Utilities Commission said in a new plan last week.
Assemblymember Christopher M. Ward (D-San Diego), who in 2022 authored a bill to create a more effective community solar program, said the state needs to double its annual solar installation rate to reach that goal and is not on track to do that using only large utility-scale solar farms and individual rooftop arrays.
“We need mid-scale community solar,” he said.
Energy and climate experts agree California must add much more clean energy to its grid, some 6 gigawatts by 2032, the California Public Utilities Commission said in a new plan last week. Above, solar panels at Extra Space Storage in Pico Rivera.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
He and a coalition of environmental groups, solar developers and the Utility Reform Network, a ratepayer advocacy group, worked to put his 2022 law into effect. They coalesced around requiring utilities to pay community solar developers and customers for the electricity they feed to the grid using the same formula they use for people who install rooftop solar.
But in May 2024, the California Public Utilities Commission decided to go with a late-in-the-game proposal backed by the state’s investor-owned utilities to pay community solar at a lower rate.
The agency, along with its public advocate’s office, argued that crediting solar developers at the higher rate would raise bills for customers who don’t have solar, who would still have to shoulder the cost of grid maintenance. It’s similar to the argument they’ve made to cut incentives for rooftop solar.
The new program relied on federal money, including the Biden administration’s Solar for All, to sweeten the deal for developers. But the utilities commission spent very little of the $250 million available under that grant before the Trump administration tried to claw it back last summer, and now it is held up in litigation.
At a legislative oversight hearing last week, Kerry Fleisher, the commission’s director of distributed energy resources, blamed the loss for the new program’s failure to launch.
“There’s been a tremendous amount of uncertainty in terms of the Solar for All funding that was intended to supplement this program,” Fleisher said. “That’s part of the reason why this has taken longer than normal.” She said the commission still plans to release a program in the next several months.
Ward, the San Diego lawmaker who wrote the community solar bill, called the program “fatally flawed” in an interview.
He’s now considering a bill to bring the community solar program more in line with what he initially envisioned — higher incentives, requirements for battery storage, and compliance with state law that mandates new houses be built with solar.
A study last year funded by a solar trade group found that could save California’s electric system $6.5 billion over 20 years. But Ward’s effort to revive his program last year failed to pass the Assembly appropriations committee.
“All the other states in our country that have adopted similar community solar program models, they are working,” said Ward, adding that 22 states have programs comparable to the one solar advocates want in California. “The writing on the wall suggests that, exactly as we feared years ago, this was not the way to go.”
California Public Utilities Commission spokesperson Terrie Prosper called California “a leader in cost-effective, least-cost solar deployment overall compared to any other state,” in an emailed statement.
Under the commission’s definition, the state has brought on 34 projects, representing 235 megawatts of community solar. But studies from groups such as the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and Wood Mackenzie use different definitions for community solar, and they show California far behind at least 10 other states.
Meanwhile, advocates and developers involved in successful community solar projects in California say they were difficult to get off the ground.
Homes in the Avocado Heights area of Los Angeles County are part of a community solar project.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
One that came online in May in the unincorporated communities of Bassett and Avocado Heights in the San Gabriel Valley provides solar electricity to about 400 low-income residents. They get 20% discounts on their electric bills for subscribing to panels installed on two Extra Space Storage building rooftops in Pico Rivera.
Organizers said it took nearly five years to find the right location and comply with utility requirements. They also got a grant in addition to funding provided by the state utilities commission’s solar program.
It “would not have happened if it hadn’t been for the grant,” said Genaro Bugarin, a director at the Energy Coalition nonprofit that proposed and coordinated the project.
Brandon Smithwood, vice president of policy at Dimension Energy, the developer for the project in West Goshen, said he still hopes to see a community solar program in California that compensates projects for the way they help out the grid.
“We’ve seen it can work, and we know what we have won’t work,” Smithwood said at the hearing.
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