Marble stones aligned with faces drawn on them.
Exhibition

Jesse Krimes: Corrections

October 28, 2024–July 13, 2025
Free with Museum admission

Photography has played a key role in structuring systems of power in society, including those related to crime and punishment. This exhibition presents immersive contemporary installations by the artist Jesse Krimes (American, b. 1982) alongside nineteenth-century photographs from The Met collection by the French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon, who developed the first modern system of criminal identification before the adoption of fingerprinting.

Krimes’s image-based installations, made over the course of his six-year incarceration, reflect the ingenuity of an artist working without access to traditional materials. Employing prison-issued soap, hair gel, playing cards, and newspaper he created works of art that seek to disrupt and recontextualize the circulation of photographs in the media. Displayed at The Met in dialogue with Bertillon, whose pioneering method paired anthropomorphic measurements with photographs to produce the present-day mug shot, Krimes’s work raises questions about the perceived neutrality of our systems of identification and the hierarchies of social imbalance they create and reinscribe. An artist for whom collaboration and activism are vital, Krimes founded the Center for Art and Advocacy to highlight the talent and creative potential among individuals who have experienced incarceration and to support and improve outcomes for formerly incarcerated artists.

This exhibition is made possible by Joyce Frank Menschel.

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A snapshot of an expert talk. Surrounded by an exhibition, a speaker engages a small group.

Met Expert Talks—Jesse Krimes: Corrections

October 31 3:00 PMThe Met Fifth Avenue
Jesse Krimes (American, b. 1982). Purgatory (detail), 2009. Soap, ink, playing cards, dimensions variable. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Vital Projects Fund Inc. Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, and Alfred Stieglitz Society Gifts, 2024 © Jesse Krimes

Plan Your Visit

Dates
October 28, 2024–July 13, 2025
Free with Museum admission
Marble stones aligned with faces drawn on them.