South Side Community Art Center

The South Side Community Art Center (SSCAC), founded in 1940, is the oldest African American art center in the United States and a Chicago Historic Landmark. Funding from Hauser & Wirth Institute, totaling $20,000, supported three paid 10-week summer internships at SSCAC.  The program seeks to correct the lack of Black representation in the field around art and cultural heritage by placing Black undergraduate and graduate students in the Center’s Archives and Art Collection to help steward this vast artist and community-centered resource.  This is the first paid internship program in Chicago to support Black students entering the workforce as archivists, collections managers, preventive conservators, and registrars.

“Only between 3 and 4% of art collection managers and museums registrars, archivists and art conservators in the U.S. are Black or African American, and despite increases in worker representation there is still a major need for Black archives and collections workers,” says SSCAC Archives and Art Collection Manager LaMar Gayles.  “By funding an internship program we will begin to approach equity towards enabling these students to financially support themselves while they acquire new skills and work to advance their careers.”

For more information on the South Side Community Art Center please visit their website.