Webinars Continue with the launch of Carceral Conversations

Written by Amy Hufnagel

Amy Hufnagel is the Assistant Director of the Sing Sing Prison Museum.

In fall/winter 2023-2024, the Sing Sing Prison Museum (SSPM) will continue its webinar programming, launching a new 6-part series as part of a new series called Carceral Conversations. This series begins on Thursday, October 12th at 12pm and is titled What I Brought Home and Left Behind: Formerly Incarcerated Individuals Share Memories and Personal Collections. It continues on the second Thursday of every month through
March 14th, 2024. Pre-registration is required, and audiences can choose to register for one or all of the sessions. The program is free, underwritten by individual donors like you, and is appropriate for ages 13 yrs and up. 

We all have things we collect and use to decorate our lives and places, things that ground us in our histories or encourage us to aspire to something better, items critical to daily life. Let’s apply this lens with a previously incarcerated individual of Sing Sing, as well as other corrections facilities, and learn how ephemera and objects take on value inside, and outside, a maximum-security correctional facility. The Sing Sing Prison Museum is in development; and because we are in formation, we have ongoing conversations about collections and what and how to use objects to tell history and the contemporary cultural conditions.

Our team brings deep museum experience to the project, but little experience inside a corrections facility. One might develop attachments to objects, or attachments to things missing or removed. We decided that instead of wondering about the material culture and incarceration, we would ask previously incarcerated individuals to share their stories and experiences with us hoping to build understanding of the material world inside one’s cell.

In this series we also will hear from SSPM’s Collections Manager who will share an object from our collection at the start of each conversation drawing links between the historic materials of Sing Sing then and now. Each event will include 10 minutes on a current collection item, 30-minute presentation by individuals sharing about their own belongings, and then robust audience engagement and Q&A.

This program is one of many strategies the Sing Sing Prison Museum is activating to expand the public’s understanding of life inside the walls at Sing Sing and NYS corrections; it is designed to expand our collective understanding of mass incarceration in NY/USA. Sharing a person’s personal collection carries unbound significance and stories of everyday life. These objects and memories can be a way in and will also bring forward larger systems that residents operate in like how to feel connected to outside communities, feel one’s own humanity, gift economies, learning and reading, barter and alternative goods and services, friendships, families, creative endeavors, communications, education, and religious practices. We have so much to learn by listening! On Oct 12 we will be in conversation with Dorian Gray Bess; Nov 9 with Tanya Pierce; December 14 with Mulumba Kazigo; and on January 11 with Carlos Ivan Calaff. Each’s biography is compelling. Joining our newsletter is the best way to stay up to date on our work.

​The Marshall Project wrote "Every American should visit a prison. Not the people who have already experienced incarceration themselves, but those who have not. Prisons use billions of taxpayer dollars every year, but our understandings are so limited.” We agree and so here are 6 programs, one per month, to build understanding and awareness. Join us!

To learn more about the ideas behind this program continue reading, and register
for this program, visit the link below.​

Register here