Nicole R. Fleetwood Awarded Second Grant from Mellon Foundation

Nicole R. Fleetwood, Paulette Goddard Professor in NYU Steinhardt’s Department of Media, Culture, and Communication and the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU Arts & Science, has been awarded a two-year, $600,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to support her ongoing Marking Time project.

Marking Time is a multi-dimensional initiative focusing on the impact of the US prison system through an exploration of art and culture. Much of the work focuses on archiving, exhibiting, and advocating for artists and creatives impacted by prisons and policing. Fleetwood’s book, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, was published in 2020, followed by an art exhibition that debuted at MoMA PS1 later that year. Fleetwood’s first Mellon grant in 2022 funded the early stages of bringing Marking Time to a wider public, including a traveling exhibition curated by Fleetwood, as well as artist support and development. 

This new grant provides support for more internal areas of the initiative, including helping artists with archiving and preserving their work and the development of a collaborative research working group to expand scholarly understanding of the landscape of arts in prison in the United States and around the world.

“The first Mellon grant was crucial in bringing the Marking Time exhibition to a much larger audience around the country, including at smaller venues where it would not have otherwise been financially feasible,” says Fleetwood. “We are excited about this new grant as an opportunity to do more inward work to more deeply support the artists and explore how social vulnerability and imprisonment are often tethered together.”

This new Mellon grant will also support continued mentoring and professional development opportunities for artists, including helping with educational access and fellowship applications, co-sponsoring and amplifying events and opportunities, and providing short-term emergency support when possible.

“This work is not just about showcasing art made in and about prisons; it’s also about opening the public perception of what it means to be incarcerated beyond the dominant media representations,” says Fleetwood. “We have a major problem with the hyperincarceration of certain populations in this country and in others, but a growing number of people want to see policy changes on how we as a society think about and deal with social problems and systemic inequalities that lead to hyperincarceration. Marking Time is another way to amplify the lives of people who are most impacted by incarceration, who are often also some of the most underresourced people in our society.”