We Are Artists Every One: The Art Center In Action, 1970 – 1986 is an exhibition that celebrates the rich and relevant history of the A.B.C.D. Cultural Arts Center, located in Bridgeport, CT. Simply known as the Art Center, the cultural organization functioned as a community partner, with roles that expanded beyond art instruction to include political, social and civic engagement. The Art Center opened in an office building in downtown Bridgeport in 1970, and expanded its capacity when it moved into the newly constructed Gary Crooks Memorial Center in 1974. The Art Center flourished during the 1970s with nationally recognized artists as instructors. At the height of its existence, the Art Center was tapped to provide the art instruction for the Bridgeport Public Schools system. The demise of the Art Center in the following decade happened slowly but definitively in the 1980s. Bridgeport, like many cities in the United States, was victim to the redirecting of funds away from urban areas and anti-poverty programs that depended on municipal, state and federal monies to survive. A casualty of shifting priorities and abandoned for a new national ideal, the Art Center lives on in the work created, the photographs and oral histories that bear witness to shared experiences, and the trajectory of lives affected by both its existence and its demise. All text in this section is written by curator Michelle Black Smith unless otherwise noted.
