page_title: Harlem Community Art Center
section_title: Significance
hierarchical_section_title: Harlem Community Art Center / Significance
caption_attribution_description: English: Bannarn standing with sculpture. Identification on accompanying label (typewritten):23334-D, New York, New York Henry Bannarn, negro sculptor of the N.Y.C. WPA Art Project and a teacher at the Harlem Community Art Center, displays an example of his work.
context_page_description: The Harlem Community Art Center was a Federal Art Project community art center that operated from 1937 to 1942. It influenced various budding artists intent on depicting Harlem and led to the formation of the Harlem Arts Alliance. It became a countrywide exemplar for others, notably the South Side Community Art Center in Chicago.
context_section_description: In its first 16 months, 70,592 people attended Harlem Community Art Center activities and more than 1,500 took part in day or evening classes in drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking and design. Artists who taught or studied at the center include Charles Alston, Henry Bannarn, Romare Bearden, Selma Burke, Ernest Crichlow, Aaron Douglas, Elton Fax, Sargent Johnson, William Henry Johnson, Langston Hughes, Ronald Joseph,Robert Blackburn, Jacob Lawrence, Norman Lewis, Claude McKay, James Lesene Wells and Richard Wright.
  Also the center had the chance to influence more than just adults "And who are these people who have been reached by the Center? Exactly 2,467 children and adults have registered in the art classes. More than 23,989 people have participated in the Center's extension activities, lectures, and demonstrations. Thousands of others come to the Center regularly to see the exhibitions and to attend other special events". Psychiatric Wards would send mentally ill children to the center and they flourished.
  The Harlem Community Art Center had a multiethnic faculty and a diverse student population was also diverse. Students ranged from established Harlem artists to children from New York psychiatric hospitals who benefitted from creative activities.
caption: Henry Bannarn, an instructor at the Harlem Community Art Center (1937)
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