UK jail opens doors for Oscar Wilde art project

A British prison, once home to Oscar Wilde, is opening for public tours as part of an arts project that focuses on the jail and its most famous inmate, the BBC reports.
Reading Prison was closed by the Ministry of Justice in 2013 and its fate has since remained uncertain.
Wilde was held between 1895 and 1897 and wrote about his experience in his poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
The project involves the work of artists, performers and writers.
Wilde was sentenced to two years with hard labor. After his release, he composed The Ballad of Reading Gaol, which was inspired by his time as a prisoner and reflected the brutality of the Victorian prison system.
The project has been organized by London arts organization Artangel, in conjunction with the National Trust, which is presenting the tours.
Artangel co-directors Michael Morris and James Lingwood said the building was a “powerful place” and they had taken away some of the more recent structures inside the prison to return it, as much as possible, to the way it would have been when it was built.
The event opens on Sunday and continues until 30 October.

Source: Aarb News