Two of Europe's biggest museums are looking to revive art's socially
progressive application by allying themselves with an unlikely constituency:
prisoners. London's National Gallery and Paris's Musée du
Louvre have both launched programs using art to spotlight the
humanity of those behind bars — though they take different approaches.

The National Gallery is set to open "Inside Art: Creative Responses to
the Collection by Young Offenders" on February 7. The initiative, now in
its second year, is the product of a year-long series of classes at Feltham
Young Offenders Institution, which houses young men between the
ages of 15 and 21. Some 30 of these inmates took part in the classes,
which saw freelance artists hired by the National Gallery use
high-quality reproductions of paintings from the institution's
collection as inspiration for educational activities.

The products of these classes, which are set to go on view in the museum's "Learning
Gallery," include drawings, sculptures, and paintings inspired by Degas, Giordano, Massys, Sassetta,Titian, Turner, and Uccello.

"Visiting the gallery, the public can see that offenders are human
beings who can grow and change," said Tim Robertson, the head of a prison-art charity, speaking to the Guardian. "Rehabilitation into
jobs, housing, and communities can succeed only if society overcomes its
stereotypes of offenders."

While the National Gallery is turning prisoners into artists, the Louvre
is transforming them into curators. A recent collaboration between the
world's most popular art museum and the Poissey correctional
facility has prisoners work on an exhibition titled "Au-delà des Murs"
("Beyond the Walls") in the prison courtyard. Ten works were chosen from
a larger batch of high-res images provided by the Louvre that could be
turned into vivid digital replicas, printed on aluminum.

The resulting prisoner-curated show includes 10 works,
including images from Caravaggio, De La Tour, Mantegna, Gericault,
Murillo, and Patinir, according to Le Monde. Each participant chose an
image and oversaw its installation. They also each wrote an
entry about why the work was meaningful to them for the "Au-delà des
Murs" catalogue. Louvre boss Henri Loyrette has visited the show
twice.

Particularly popular with the Poissey inmates was a painting by Caspar
David Friedrich, "The Tree with Crows," from 1822. "It represents a
lot for us," said one of the curators. "A tree with crows, that's the
weight, that's prison."