What is a polymath and why do I call Reginald Dwayne Betts one? According to Wikipedia a Polymath “is an individual whose knowledge spans many different subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve problems.”

What is the knowledge that Betts has developed? Let’s start with his formal education and accomplishments. He has a master’s degree in writing from Warren Wilson College and is the author of a memoir and 4 books of poetry. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School and a licensed attorney who helps incarcerated men to attain parole. He is the founder and CEO of Freedom Reads, a non-profit that places free standing libraries inside prison cell blocks. In 2021 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, one of many awards he has amassed.

Take a step back and let’s examine his “self-taught” accomplishments. He survived 9 years in adult prisons after being convicted of an armed carjacking, in which no one was injured, at the age of 16. He earned his GED and taught others to do so. He conceived of putting books into the hands of people in prisons as books are what helped get him through his experience there and taught himself how to organize, fund raise and develop a non-profit called Freedom Reads. He taught himself Spanish in order to translate his poems and read them in prisons. He wrote and starred in a one man show Felon: An American Washi Tale which he has performed in and out of prisons, including off Broadway- New York and New Haven. He became interested in the poet photographer Thomas Sayers Ellis and began carrying around a camera and taking candid street photographs. He was unhappy with how these were being developed, so taught himself how to print and use various papers to achieve the affects he wanted. Need I go on, because I could?

Betts developed many of these skills simultaneously. He uses his tremendous mental energy and physical endurance to multitask at an extreme level. Yet he does not distance himself from others, as I imagine many polymaths do, because of this. Rather he has developed a hypersensitivity to his daily interactions. He notices the people around him whether as subjects in the photographs he takes or as recipients of the poems he randomly recites, or in the needs of the incarcerated he tends. (I have never seen him not take a call from a prisoner whether in a conversation or during a performance.)

While many of the photographs that you encounter in the first part of the exhibition are off kilter, this seems to mesh with the life that Betts has lived and that so many are now living. He gives his subjects interest and dignity. His photos make you take notice and think about becoming more aware. If you look closely, many of them also have a reflection of, or part of, Betts in them as if to emphasize his participation in the encounter. He is not just standing back capturing his subjects. He lets us know he is there with them. There is a solidarity in this as in so many aspects of Betts’ life.

The first of the back rooms of the exhibition represents his one man show Felon: An American Washi Tale. The second is what the installation of a Freedom Reads Library looks like and what impact it has as seen in the photographs of and letters from inmates which are taped to the wall. The third represents his collaboration with artist Titus Kaphar on their book Redaction, a combination of poetry and visual art to expose the impact of incarceration through redacted legal documents. There you can examine not only many of the poems, but also samples of the decisions that went into the making of the book.

Betts is 45 years old. One can hardly imagine what “problems” the ongoing synthesizing of his knowledge, imagination and drive will “solve” in his own life and the lives of others.