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1944-05-14

1944-05-14: (The Centre d’Art Established in Port-au-Prince by DeWitt Peters, Creating an Institutional Home for Haitian Art That Would Bring International R…

Haitian

1944-05-14: (The Centre d’Art Established in Port-au-Prince by DeWitt Peters, Creating an Institutional Home for Haitian Art That Would Bring International Recognition to a National Artistic Tradition Rooted in Vodou, Revolution, and Resistance): On May 14, 1944, American watercolorist DeWitt Peters established the Centre d’Art in Port-au-Prince, creating the first institutional home for Haitian visual art. The Centre d’Art became a gathering place for self-taught Haitian painters, many of whom drew on Vodou imagery, revolutionary history, and the everyday life of the Haitian people for their subject matter. The establishment of the Centre d’Art during World War II was an act of cultural institution-building that would have consequences far beyond its modest origins. Haitian art, particularly the vivid, spiritually charged paintings of artists like Hector Hyppolite, a Vodou priest who painted with chicken feathers during the occupation, would gain international recognition and become one of the few domains in which the world encountered Haiti through beauty rather than pity.