In conjunction with our summer exhibit, Finding Hope Within, and the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival, HSM is pleased to present Paint Me A Road Out of Here, a film centered on Faith Ringgold’s artwork For the Women’s House. Currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum, this monumental painting was created in 1971 for women incarcerated on Rikers Island. As the documentary reveals, the artwork was treated with disregard by prison staff and ultimately whitewashed.

Fifty years after the painting was completed, artist Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, who gave birth in prison in 2010, banded together with artists, activists, politicians, correction officers, and Ringgold herself to free the artwork from Rikers—with the ultimate goal of freeing the women there. Paint Me a Road out of Here traces the journeys of the painting and of two artists who challenged the same oppressive institutions with their artwork, voices, and shared pursuits.