As part of the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the creation of the Art Center, Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis, President of the Board, retraces the history of this mecca of artistic creation which has become legendary.

"In the Port-au-Prince of the forties the Art Center was created, none of the founding members and artists who already met there could have imagined that this brand new institution would thus resist the wear and tear of time and the recurring turbulence of socio-political life in this ephemeral country.

And yet she held on, and still holds on, resolutely. In its beginnings, a combination of internal and external factors made this space a mecca for artistic creation and debates around art and a Haitian aesthetic reflected in the concept of Haitianness.

But it is the staging of the astonishing creativity of artists and craftsmen of the visual arts, whose scope of real and symbolic works stemming from a today accepted genealogy, which was at the heart of the creation in May 1944 of this an emblematic place. It was first of all about meeting, learning, creating, exchanging, exhibiting, debating, disseminating, and the founding artist members of this new Art Center were fully aware of this [...]"

Download the history of the 80 years of the Art Center: https://www.haitilibre.com/docs/80-ans-centre-d-art.pdf

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