Jonathan Ferrara 
Guns in the Hands of Artists 

In the 1990s, the New Orleans murder rate exploded. In 1996, 350 people were killed—the highest number in the city’s history, and the highest rate in the nation. In response to this crisis, gallery owner and artist Jonathan Ferrara and artist Brian Borrello, launched a powerful project:
Guns in the Hands of Artists. Over sixty artists, including painters, glass artists, sculptors, photographers, and poets, used decommissioned guns taken off the city streets via a gun buyback program to express a thought, make a statement, open a discussion, and to stimulate thinking about guns and gun violence in America.


As gun violence continues to devastate the nation on a daily basis,
Guns in the Hands of Artists reemerged in 2012 as a community-based social activist art project that has since traveled to six cities across the US. Using art as a mirror for life and interweaving the works of thirty diverse artists with the voices of seventeen national thought leaders, this book is an important outgrowth of the exhibition and an extension of its efforts to employ art as a vehicle for dialogue, as a call to action, and—ultimately—as an agent of change.


Essays by: Walter Isaacson, Senator Tim Kaine, Lupe Fiasco, Richard Ford, Joe Nocera, Trymaine Lee, Lolis Eric Elie, John M. Barry, Dan Cameron, Lucia Mc Bath, Harry Shearer, Jonathan Ferrara, Brian Borrello, Maria Cuomo Cole, Michael Waldman, E. Ethelbert Miller, Mayor Mitchell J. Landrieu, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and Captain Mark Kelly.

Über den Autor

Jonathan Ferrara is an artist, gallery owner, community activist, and cultural producer. He has been a voice for the arts for twenty years and is a leader in the movement to make New Orleans an international arts destination. Cultural activism—using art to affect social change—is Ferrara’s trademark. He is the founder ARTDOCS, a medical program for artists without health insurance, as well as the Annual No Dead Artists International Juried Exhibition of Contemporary Art, and the Guns in The Hands of Artists Foundation, Ferrara continues to challenge his audience and himself in search of the best contemporary art and ideas wherever that may take him around the world. He has produced cultural exchange exhibitions with Cuba, Hungary, Germany, and Jordan as well as across the US. He lives in New Orleans with his wife, artist Sidonie Villere, son Anson, and daughter Quinn. Jonathan Ferrara Gallery exhibits works of art from around the world and has been featured in The New York Times, Time, NPR, The Associated Press, Art in America, ARTnews, The Art Newspaper, MSNBC, ABC’s Good Morning America, and in numerous other national and international media. The gallery regularly exhibits during Art Basel Miami Beach, Armory Week in New York, Art Basel in Switzerland, and in the Houston, San Francisco, and Seattle art fairs.