This Abolitionist’s Tea Party is a workshop facilitated by artist jackie sumell in collaboration with the Lower Eastside Girls Club and their installation in MoMA’s Creativity Lab. Historically, plants have been part of resistance movements, communicating freedom and liberation. The Abolitionist’s Tea Party will ask, “How does the natural world endorse abolition as a strategy for liberation?” Facilitated by sumell and youth from the Lower Eastside Girls Club, participants will circle up, taste, feel, and smell different plants that were grown on the Lower Eastside Girls Club’s rooftop garden, many of which are considered “weeds.” Participants will collectively define and share their experience and understanding of abolition and, together, will ask the plants how they endorse those ideas.
This 90-minute, in-person program is free and open to anyone who is invested in thinking about prison abolition. This workshop takes place in person at MoMA. This workshop is now at capacity. Please email [email protected] to be added to the waitlist.
jackie sumell’s work explores the interdependence of social sculpture, mindfulness practices, humanness, and prison abolition. She has spent the last two decades working directly with incarcerated folx, most notably her elders Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox. Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout the US and Europe. An ardent public speaker and organizer, sumell’s long-standing work with the Angola 3 has positioned her at the forefront of the public campaign to end solitary confinement in the US, inviting us to imagine a landscape without prisons. sumell is based in New Orleans, where she continues to work on Herman’s House, Solitary Gardens, the Abolitionist’s Apothecary, and several other community-generated, advocacy-based projects.
Since 1996 the Lower Eastside Girls Club (LESGC) has supported young women and gender-expansive youth of color throughout New York City in leveraging their inner power to shape a better future for themselves, their community, and the world. Through free, year-round, innovative programming, LESGC connects young people with their passions, celebrates their curiosity, and channels their creative energy. In 2022, LESGC expanded their mission and service population with the Center for Wellbeing and Happiness, which provides free, full-spectrum wellness services for all generations and genders on the Lower East Side.
Accessibility
FM assistive-listening devices (headsets and neck loops) are available for sound amplification. Neck loops are available to use with these devices. Neck loops do not work with hearing aids without T-coil technology.
Chairs with backs will be used as seating.
All-gender restrooms are located nearby.
American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and live captioning is available for public programs upon request with two weeks’ advance notice. MoMA will make every effort to provide accommodation for requests made with less than two weeks’ notice. Please contact [email protected] to make a request for these accommodations.
The Adobe Foundation is proud to support equity, learning, and creativity at MoMA.
Access and Community Programs are supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).
Major funding is provided by Volkswagen of America, the Agnes Gund Education Endowment Fund for Public Programs, The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art Endowment for Educational Programs, the Jeanne Thayer Young Scholars Fund, and the Annual Education Fund.