Collector to use $100M from sale of prized painting to support criminal justice reform
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Art collector Agnes Gund had a plan to support criminal justice reform and reduce mass incarceration.
To help reach those goals, she started a fund with money from the sale of her prized 1962 Roy Lichtenstein painting, “Masterpiece,” the New York Times reports.
The 78-year-old Gund sold the painting in January for $165 million, and she is using $100 million of that to create a new Art for Justice Fund. She hopes other art collectors will donate another $100 million to the fund over the next five years.
The Ford Foundation will administer the fund, making donations to groups with proven track records on criminal justice issues, according to the Times and an announcement at the foundation’s Equals Change Blog.
The fund will support programs to cut the prison population in states with high incarceration rates and to strengthen education and employment options for people leaving prison, according to the fund website. The fund will also support artistic initiatives “that enable artists to bear witness to the injustices of the system and speak to the potential of people enmeshed in it,” the website says.
