Juvenile in Justice

The Augustana Teaching Museum of Art will present the photography exhibition "Juvenile in Justice" March 13 through April 18.

An opening reception will be held at 4 p.m. March 13 in Centennial Hall. Richard Ross, the artist, will be present at the reception.

Ross traveled across the country, taking photographs and conducting interviews in more than 200 juvenile detention centers in 31 states between the 2005 and 2012. "Juvenile in Justice" is a collection of more than 50 large-scale photographs accompanied by the personal stories of the young prisoners.

(A follow-up project, "Girls in Justice," is featured at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport through March 15. Ross will speak at the closing reception at the Figge at 7 p.m. March 12.)

According to Ross, "'Juvenile in Justice' explores the treatment of American juveniles housed by law in facilities that treat, confine, punish, assist and, occasionally, harm them.

"The hope is that by seeing these images, people will have a better understanding of the conditions that exist," he has written.

A book of the same title to accompany the exhibition has a foreword by Ira Glass, host of NPR's "This American Life," and a preface by Bart Lubow, a juvenile justice reformer. Lubow writes in his preface, "Those confined are youth without voices, from families without resources, in communities without power."

Ross is a distinguished professor of art at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His work has been exhibited internationally.

These exhibits were funded through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.