Voices and Votes: Democracy in America, a traveling Smithsonian Institution exhibition, opens at Sandy Spring Museum on October 8.  The museum serves as the fourth venue of a five-stop tour of the state, presented through Maryland Humanities’ Museum on Main Street program.

Each Voices and Votes host creates a local exhibit to complement the Smithsonian Institution exhibition. Sandy Spring Museum presents Incarceration and Creation: Art as a Human Need, which features art from people currently or previously incarcerated. Allison Weiss, Executive Director at Sandy Spring Museum, says, art  “serves as a mode of communication, a vehicle for connection, and a source of freedom.” The museum partners on the exhibit with Justice Arts Coalition (JAC), a  Maryland based non-profit that expresses the goal of working “to reimagine justice” by connecting currently and previously incarcerated artists with other artists, arts advocates, and allies. JAC focuses on sharing stories and says its goal is to have “the arts as a bridge between people inside and outside of prison.”

Voices and Votes is the seventh Museum on Main Street project brought to smaller communities throughout the state by Maryland Humanities. Each venue hosts the exhibition for six weeks and develops a complementary exhibit highlighting their community’s heritage and histories.

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“In addition to learning more about our country’s voting history, we’re looking forward to exploring the voting rights history of five diverse Maryland regions where our host sites are located,” said Lindsey Baker, executive director of Maryland Humanities. “We see the impact the lack of voting access has on many Americans today and can better understand current civil rights movements by looking at our history.”

Voices and Votes programming is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the State of Maryland, and Maryland Public Television is the tour’s Media Sponsor.

Sandy Spring Museum hosts Voices and Votes October 8–November 21, 2021. The museum is located at 17901 Bentley Road in Sandy Spring. The exhibition will be on view Mondays and Fridays, 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.; Wednesdays, 10:00 a.m.–8:00 p.m.;  and Sundays, 12:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m. Sandy Spring Museum will follow specific COVID safety protocols. Learn more at www.sandyspringmuseum.org or call 301-774-0022.