Database | Ongoing
Growing out of a legacy of visual criminology at the University of Tennessee, this database is a digitally curated, searchable, and open-source database that documents an unprecedented flow of social movement art in the era of “new abolition,” which spans from the birth of the Movement for Black Lives (circa 2012), through the George Floyd uprisings, and into the present. The database contains art concerned with a range of issues, and a multitude of movements, that are directed towards new abolition, and its historic antecedents. Abolition Now (AN) features short vignette and long form interviews with artists, organizers, and curators about the production and contexts of their work and the image. When possible, AN traces how people reuse and repurpose movement art. The participatory platform includes educational commentary, artist study guides, a submission portal, and user guides to empower people to build their own Canopy-IIIF digital exhibit or archive. AN includes a number of Southern and Indigenous regional artists whose work was collected during the Spring 2025 Appalachian Justice Research Lab, led by Vivian Swayne (Sociology).