On Sunday, Seattle artist and photographer Rafael Soldi posted a screenshot of an email he sent to 4Culture, King County’s cultural funding agency, to his Instagram account. "$500k call from @kc4culture to purchase art to fill the new youth jail," he wrote in the caption. "If you invest $500K in housing/educating/empowering youth, you may not even need a jail to put them in. Let that sink in for a second."

In an email to me, another local artist, Kate Sweeney, who received the same invitation from 4Culture, wrote "In good conscience, I cannot seek to profit from a project that further harms kids. When I first read the email I had a strong gut reaction to it, a feeling that the jail is just wrong, and no amount of art can change that.” She believes that money "should be spent on helping kids, in and out of the jail system, to create their own art, as an expression of their lives and their experiences. If art heals, take it directly to the patient.”

Soldi and Sweeney are two of several artists who have spoken out publicly against the recent call for portable artworks to furnish the new and controversial King County Children and Family Justice Center—more colloquially and accurately referred to as the “youth jail”—which is due to open later this year.

The call, which was put out last Friday, specifically asks for two and three-dimensional artworks for permanent display in public access areas of the jail: courtrooms, gathering spaces, lobbies, “feature walls” that are at either end of a central corridor, meeting rooms, hallways, and reception areas. The themes of the desired artwork need to fall into the nebulous designations of “constructs of identity—people and place” or “landscapes—forest, mountains, city, and sound.” None of these works would be visible in non-public spaces, i.e. the jail part of the youth jail.

The call for artwork was not public. It was invite-only. Over the phone, 4Culture spokesperson Christina DePaolo tells me private invitations are standard practice for the organization, and that around half of all of 4Culture’s calls are invite-only. The agency relies on such calls especially when they are working on a tight timeline (the call’s deadline is the 29th of this month) or when it's specific in scope (like, apparently, identity and landscapes). The call was put out not only to local King County artists, but national artists as well. The finalists will be chosen by a panel that includes local working artists, county officials, and other experts familiar with art in incarcerated environments.

This is, in fact, not the first call for art for the CFJC, but the third. DePaolo told me that two more calls had been put out earlier this year: the first for permanent murals within the detention areas of the jail for which five artists have already been selected; and the second for artwork for the facade of the building at the Alder Street entrance, for which one artist has been selected. Who exactly was chosen has yet to be announced. Confidential to the chosen artists: my DMs are extremely open.

The chorus of commenters on various social media outlets in the art community wondered whether the nearly $500k could be redirected toward Creative Justice, an arts-based alternative program that works to keep children out of incarceration. In a statement issued this morning, 4Culture executive director Brian J. Carter says the organization tried to direct as many funds as they could to Creative Justice, but they are required by law to spend the remaining funds on physical art, under certain limitations, for this youth jail.

Because of the city’s percent-for-art ordinance, 4Culture is responsible for managing one percent of the $200 million levy approved by King County voters for the building of the youth jail and for directing it toward art projects for the facility. “At that moment, 4Culture had a choice to make. Walking away from the project would have been illegal—with far-reaching consequence for the artists and organizations we support across the county,” Carter writes. “Staying with the project meant working within a system that criminalizes the youth of our community, especially black and brown children. There is no silver lining to this situation.”

Everyone here is in a sticky situation. 4Culture is legally mandated to furnish and buy art to decorate this jail for children, despite their hesitancy to do so. Artists—who stand to profit thousands of dollars from this call to art—are rightfully upset at the idea of, in a way, supporting a system that criminalizes children. Incarcerated children and people who work with them undoubtedly have a right to an environment that isn't inherently traumatizing, which is what the art is meant to help with. So the question really facing the community of Seattle artists (and national artists as well, I guess) is: what kind of art should go in a youth jail? Artists will respond to this call. They have already responded to this call. And 4Culture, for their part, seems open to really listening to what the art community here has to say.

“I make no claims to being infallible, and as long as our organization serves King County’s creative communities, we will continue to listen, collaborate, and respond,” says Carter in his statement. “In this instance, we continue to push, as we have since 2012, for art that helps bring about a reality where youth incarceration is obsolete.”