At its annual meeting in Curacao, the Latin America and Caribbean Regional Committee of UNESCO's Memory of the World Program has granted the status of regional documentary heritage to the archive fund of the Art Center of Haiti. These archives, until now little exploited, testify of the institutional and artistic history of the Center as well as its preponderant role in the development and the diffusion of the Haitian art locally and internationally.

DeWitt Peters and Haitian artists and intellectuals like Albert Mangonès, Philippe Thoby-Marcelin, Georges Remponeau, Maurice Borno and Jean Chenet founded the Art Center in 1944. Initially conceived as an unconventional art school, the institution arouses the interest of personalities such as Wifredo Lam, José Gómez Sicre, René d'Harnoncourt and André Breton quickly became a place of dissemination and promotion of Haitian art.

The Center of Art recognized as a public utility in 1947, created in 1945 the first newspaper of the plastic arts in Haiti "Studio No 3". He is also at the origin of the creation of the Museum of Haitian Art and murals of the Holy Trinity Episcopal Cathedral of Port-au-Prince, reference work for Haitian art.

The Center allows "popular" painting by self-taught artists from modest backgrounds to be revealed to the world. Over the years, well-known Haitian artists have been revealed by the Art Center on the international scene, including Philomé Obin, Hector Hyppolite, George Liautaud, Antonio Joseph, Rigaud Benoit, Robert St Brice, Jasmin Joseph, Prefect Duffaut...

The institution is a true crossroads of art where many foreign artists came to exhibit among others: Wifredo LAM (Cuba), Jason Seley, William Calfee, Ruth Van Sickle Ford (USA), Eelco C. Leegstra (Holland) to name only them.

It is also a place for meetings and reflection unique in Haiti where intellectuals, art critics and renowned foreign visitors rub shoulders as the leader of surrealism André Breton (France), the critic of art José Gómez Sicre (Cuba), anthropologist-ethnologist Alfred Metraux, or writers Truman Capote (USA) and Jean-Paul Sartre (France).

IH/ TB/ iciHaiti