Smithsonian Folklife Traces the Ideas Behind the Returning Artists Guild
A 2021 Smithsonian Folklife profile of RAG co-founder Aimee Wissman traces how art, community, and lived experience helped shape the Returning Artists Guild and its vision for a future beyond incarceration.
In a 2021 feature for the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage's Folklife Magazine, writer Amber Long traces RAG co-founder Aimee Wissman's journey from making art while incarcerated to helping build a creative community rooted in connection, care, and the lived experience of incarceration.
The story also captures an important chapter in the Returning Artists Guild's early history. It describes how Wissman and fellow artist Kamisha Thomas founded the RAG as a network of currently and formerly incarcerated artists creating opportunities and community for one another, and follows the Guild as it began expanding beyond the artists who first connected at Dayton Correctional Institution.
Throughout the feature, Wissman wrestles with questions that continue to shape RAG's work today: the role of art in survival and healing, the importance of community led by people directly impacted by incarceration, and whether meaningful change requires looking beyond prison reform toward abolition.
Published by the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the feature offers an early look at the ideas, relationships, and lived experiences that helped shape what the RAG would become.
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