Among the works featured in “The Pencil Is a Key: Drawings by Incarcerated Artists” are paños chicanos, a subgenre of drawings unique to art made in US prisons in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. . Originating from prisons in Texas, California, and New Mexico by pachucos (young male members of the Chicano zoot suitwearing subculture of the 1940s), paños chicanos belong to an ongoing genre of prison drawing executed on prison-issue handkerchiefs and other small pieces of fabric (paños). A number of common tropes recur in these works, including la vida loca (the crazy life) associated with drugs and crime; viajes (fantasies, dreams, and drug trips); religion; family; and romance. Imagery is drawn from Mexican and Mexican-American culture, tattoos, low-rider detailing, prison life, comic books, and pornographic magazines. . “The Pencil Is a Key: Drawings by Incarcerated Artists” is on view in our Main Gallery and Drawing Room until January 5, 2020. Throughout the run of the exhib...