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Project Title: Is This What it Takes to be a Man?
Recipient Organization: City and County of San Francisco Sheriff’s Department
Fiscal Sponsor: Programs for People
Lead Artist: Ruth Morgan
Genre and Date Awarded: Visual Arts, July 1997Presented: July-September 1998

Collaborating with the Sheriff’s Department of the City and County of San Francisco and with the batterer intervention program manalive, photographer Ruth Morgan created a series of three posters—for the interiors and exteriors of 150 municipal railway buses and 30 bus shelters—promoting the ideas of “restorative justice.” Smaller posters using the same images were displayed in neighborhood organizations. This project was part of a “Resolve to Stop the Violence” campaign conducted by the Sheriff’s Department.

The posters gained even greater visibility than originally planned. Sheriff’s Department buses displayed them and they were mounted within the lobby of the county jail long after their presentation on Municipal Railway city busses, the images were reproduced on 40,000 postcards that were distributed widely, and the San Francisco Giants dedicated September 13, 1998 as “Resolve to Stop the Violence” day at 3 Com Park, where Morgan’s images were projected on the Jumbotron in front of 35,000 spectators.

Is this What it Takes to be a Man? was an unusual violence prevention effort designed to reduce recidivism, hold offenders accountable for the harm they have caused, and engage community organizations in working with victims and ex-offenders in further preventing violence. It was based on the principles of restorative justice, a criminal justice concept that highlights the fact that the whole community—including victims, families, and offenders—is harmed by violence. One theme of restorative justice, addressed by this project, is that traditional social messages about masculinity often promote violent male-role behavior. Ruth Morgan’s posters illuminated this theme.

Ruth Morgan wrote at the project’s outset, “I have always been interested in making art that informs or attempts to inspire social change and social justice.” She brought to this project 25 years of experience working in jails and prisons and with at-risk youth in the San Francisco Bay Area as a photographic artist and arts administrator. Among other projects, she had spent a year creating “San Quentin—Maximum Security,” for which she spent three years photographing in San Quentin State Prison; and, for the San Francisco Art Commission, Morgan had developed the public art poster series, “Record Breaker,” which highlighted former prisoners who had “broken the record” of recidivism and led successful lives after their releases.

Programs for People is a non-profit affiliate of the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department that supports the Department’s Programs Division. The Department has a long tradition of developing innovative social and educational programs in the city and county jails that are designed to give ex-offenders the opportunity to develop the skills and attitudes that help them become productive individuals. To develop the theme and appropriate messages for the poster series, Morgan collaborated both with Sheriff’s Department Program Division staff and with facilitators and formerly abusive men from manalive, a nationally respected batterer intervention program that has offered classes in the County’s jails for many years. The theory and methods developed by manalivedemonstrate how underlying social beliefs about male-role behaviors are a factor in interpersonal violence. manalive has been working to end men’s violence against women and conducting classes for abusive men in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1980. More than 20,000 men have participated in manalive classes and, at the time of this project, thirty classes—three of them Spanish monolingual—were running in the region.

Programs for People and the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department have incorporated work with many artists in their innovative programs. They wrote of their intentions for this project: “Changes in community standards and private behaviors cannot be mandated by government or instilled by social service agencies working in isolation. Public art has the power to capture the imagination of individuals and convey important ideas in an extremely accessible way.”

Ruth Morgan

1980-1994: Director of Jail Arts Program, S.F. Jail

1994-Present: Director of Community Works

community-works-ca.org

Selected Solo Exhibitions

• Harlem Is…The Cathedral Church of St. John the Devine, New York City, 2004
• Harlem Is…CCNY, 2003
• Documentary photographs with text, 1199 Gallery, New York, New York (1998)
• “Invisible People,” Ruth Morgan and Jim Goldberg, Museum of Photographic Arts, Balboa Park, San Diego (1988)
• Moore College of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1987)
• “Biennial: The Bay Area,” 12 solo shows, Newport Harbor Museum, Newport Beach, California (1986)
• Matrix Gallery, University Art Museum, Berkeley, California (1985)

Public Art Exhibitions

• Is This What it Takes to be a Man?, Creative Work Fund Project, (1998)
• Permanent installation at 425 Seventh Street
• “Record Breaker,” 24 kiosks along Market Street, Market Street Art in Transit Project, San Francisco Art Commission (1995) Permanent Installations in Three S.F. Jail Facilities.
• “A Sense of Place,” Collaboration with Kim Anno, Billboards in the East Bay, sponsored by the Richmond Art Center, Richmond, California (1993)

Selected Group Exhibitions

• 30th Anniversary of the Berkeley Art Center, invitational (1997)
• Photographs from the Raimer Collection, Luther Burbank Center (1997)
• “Current Events” with Les Krims, Steve Hart, Gail Rebhan, six person show, The Art Gym, Marylhurst College (1996)
• “10 x 10,” Ten Women, Ten Prints, Ruth Morgan, Mildred Howard, Carrie Mae Weems, and others, Berkeley Art Center (1995)
• “Body and Soul” three person show, Berkeley Art Center (1994)
• “Sharing our Lives New York/South Africa,” Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, two-person show, Harlem, New York (1994)
• “Big Pictures,” contemporary large-scale photography with Carrie Mae Weems, Ruth Morgan and others, Tecoah Bruce Gallery, California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, California (1991)
• “Crosscurrents-Cross Country,” Photographic Resource Center, Boston, Massachusetts, and Eye Gallery, San Francisco, California (1988)

International Exhibitions

• Troisieme Triennale Internationale de la Photographic, Belgium (1987)
• Museum de la Photographie, Belgium (1987)

Special Documentary Projects

• “Sharing Our Lives, New York/South Africa,” documentary of young people in their schools, homes, and communities, traveling exhibition (1994)
• “The New York Shelter Project,” young people living in temporary housing (1994)

Grants and Awards

• Creative Work Fund grant, 1997
• Nominated, Adeline Kent Award, San Francisco Art Institute (1996) Market Street Art in Transit, San Francisco Art Commission (1994)
• San Francisco Foundation grant, San Quentin project (1983)
• California Arts Council Documentary Project (1983)
• Artists in Social Institutions, California Arts Council (1980-83)

Selected Collections

• Houston Museum of Art
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
• Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, California
• Musée de la Photographic, Charleroi, Belgium
• Menil Foundation, Houston, Texas
• Dr. Barry Ramer Collection, San Francisco, California
• Kevin Consey, Newport, California
• Anna Deveare Smith
• The Oakland Museum of California