Art, Advocacy, and the Stories that Move Us
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After being incarcerated as a young adult, Beverly Price was first exposed to art through a scholarship at the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum. Then a dream inspired her to pick up a camera. Today, her nationally recognized work documents the beauty, resilience, and humanity of Black life in DC, capturing stories that might otherwise go unseen. Her story embodies the central idea behind the event: advocacy begins by helping people see the people at the heart of the issues.
When Price opened the panel discussion at Avenues to Justice: The Art of Advocacy event, she set the tone for an evening that explored how art can deepen our understanding of justice and strengthen advocacy. Hosted by the DC Bar Foundation’s Young Lawyers Network Leadership Council, Avenues to Justice featured the Glimmer on the Horizon exhibition, curated by Down Gallery, as well as a panel discussion with artists and leaders from organizations working to advance justice across the District. The event demonstrated how creative expression can help people better understand the lived experiences behind the legal issues the Foundation’s grantee partners work to address every day.
Across the Glimmer on the Horizon exhibition, artists explored advocacy through deeply personal stories. Among the works in the full online gallery was Price’s A Lovely Day (right), a photograph that reflects the love and tenderness between a Black mother and her son, inspired by the sense of community she experienced at Southeast DC’s Anacostia Park. That connection to Anacostia Park came full circle earlier this year when Price’s work was showcased alongside renowned photographer Gordon Parks in the exhibition A Language We Share: Beverly Price and Gordon Parks. Pairing Parks’ photographs of Anacostia Park from the 1940s with Price’s present-day images of the same neighborhood, the exhibit explored how artists from different generations have documented Black life, resilience, and community.
For Price, photography became a way to challenge incomplete narratives and preserve stories with dignity and care. Penelope Spain, co-founder and CEO of Open City Advocates—a DC Bar Foundation grantee partner—shared how her organization is partnering with an artist to help young people in the juvenile justice system express what having access to legal representation means to them. Through their words and personal artwork, they will help shape a larger collaborative art project that elevates their voices beyond the courtroom.
Jimmy Moody, legal director at the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, another DC Bar Foundation grantee partner, reflected on how sharing personal experiences can help humanize people who have been wrongfully convicted and build support for their release.
“Without the storytelling, scientific evidence is not going to move the hearts and minds of our fact finders,” he said. “We’ve got to look at art to learn how to tell those stories effectively, because no one is better at that storytelling than artists.”
These sentiments were echoed by Clinique Chapman, CEO of the DC Justice Lab, who described storytelling as an essential part of systems change because it centers the humanity of the people most affected. She said every element of her organization’s visual identity is intentional. From its logo to its social media, the DC Justice Lab uses art to tell a story about racial justice, Black leadership, and the communities most affected by the criminal justice system.
The evening demonstrated that art is more than a form of expression; it is also a powerful tool for building understanding and advancing justice. Artwork from the Glimmer on the Horizon exhibition is available in the online gallery until Aug. 1, and 50% of the proceeds will support the DC Bar Foundation’s mission to create access to justice for all DC residents.
