





HARLEM ART CENTER
2015
The Harlem Arts Center MFA thesis project is meant to draw artists to the historic Harlem neighbohood and provide them spaces to work freely. It will serve as a gathering space for artists from all disciplines. The center will support artists by providing them with art, dance, music rehearsal and recording studios as well as performance and gallery spaces, cultivating artists in all stages of their creative development through educational programs, commissions and residencies. Other members of the community will also have access to the center and will have the opportunity to participate in its lectures, performances and classes available to all who wish to enroll. The center will also house a local restaurant that will provide live entertainment on certain days of the week, and an art supply store, saving the trip of uptown New York City artists downtown to where currently the only art supply stores are. HAC will be a center for the people of the community to be exposed to the arts where they can have the opportunity to embrace and value it. A place of interaction, for both artists and non artists, building relationships amongst members of the community.
With the adaptive reuse of abandoned P.S. 186 located on the North-Western part of Harlem, this center will be easily accessible to people not only of the Harlem community but also those living in upper Manhattan and the Bronx. It will go beyond what the members of the Harlem Artists Guild once envisioned and be beneficial to a great number of New Yorkers.