Incorrigibles:The NY House of Refuge and NY State Training School for Girls

Alison Cornyn, Independent Artist, in conversation with Mia Ruyter, JIE Education Outreach Manager

In 2014 Alison Cornyn found in the trash two discarded items, a book of photographs and a diary of a woman who, at a very young age, had been incarcerated at the New York House of Refuge and New York State Training School for Girls. Cornyn’s subsequent research on the specific institution yielded a trove of materials that comprise the project Incorrigibles. In 2016, as part of the Mellon Foundation-funded project “Aging and its Tropes” Cornyn presented some of that original research that was based on the found book of photographs and diaries of some of the women (initially only Black women, eventually a few white and Latinas) who had been locked up between 1904 and 1975 at the New York House of Refuge and New York State Training School for Girls. That project has grown and has received support from NEH, New York Humanities, and other organizations, and has spun the new documentary on Hilda O vs. New York State, a woman, now 82 years-old, who was locked up at the reformatory and is suing NY State for sexual abuse that she endured while there. The discussion will present Hilda O through the Incorrigibles project, so that the two cases contextualize each other.

is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and educator whose work often incorporates public memory and archives. For over 20 years, Cornyn has initiated new forms of storytelling in installations and online, investigating pressing social issues from multiple perspectives. Many of her projects address the US criminal legal system and mass incarceration. Her current project, Incorrigibles, examines youth justice for girls in New York – past and present. Incorrigibles investigates the long-term use of stigmatizing language to define and confine young women and tells the stories of women who were incarcerated in their youth to create an archive of first-person testimonies that counter and broaden institutional histories. Her work has received numerous awards, including a Creative Capital award for her pioneering interactive documentary about US prisons, a Peabody Award, the Gracie Allen for Women in Media Award, and Pew’s Batten Award for Innovation. She serves on the Board of the NYC Municipal Archives and teaches at the School of Visual Arts in NYC.

is the Education and Outreach Manager for the SOF/Heyman Center. She coordinates the educational programming offered by JIE in New York City jails. She is a doctoral student in Art and Art Education at Teachers College, and received an MFA in Art from Hunter College in New York City.

Host or Publisher The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities