Prisons Today: Questions in the Age of Mass Incarceration

Sean conceived and led the fundraising for the exhibit Prisons Today: Questions in the Age of Mass Incarceration at Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site. He went on to curate the exhibit. It opened in May of 2016 after a three-year development period.

The exhibit has received extensive critical praise, and an external summative evaluation has documented high levels of visitor engagement.

In 2017, Prisons Today won the Overall Award of Excellence from the American Alliance of Museums, the highest award in museum exhibition design.

Prototyping for Prisons Today, Winter 2015

The opening vestibule in Prisons Today: Questions in the Age of Mass Incarceration

The main entry to the exhibit invites visitors choose between admitting they have broken the law, and claiming they have not.

Documentary filmmaker Gabriela Bulisova’s Six Voices, embedded in Prisons Today.

Sean commissioned documentary filmmaker Gabriela Bulisova to highlight the lives of people currently involved with the U.S. justice system, and embedded her three-screen film into Prisons Today.

Sean brought in Interactive Mechanics to design a touch-screen interactive that asks visitors to rank the justifications for building prisons. The interactive also asks if there are other, unspoken reasons that America has incarcerated so many people in the last forty years.

Sean holds the Overall Award for Excellence from the American Alliance of Museums, the highest award in exhibit development and design, awarded to Prisons Today in 2017.