The Establishment of the Harlem School of the Arts

Abstract

The Harlem School of the Arts, which has trained young New Yorkers in the performing arts for over two decades, has been described by its founder as oasis of hope in a sea of despair (Franzen 1979, 97). With this remark the school's founder, the internationally renowned black soprano Dorothy Maynor, highlighted the contrast between the cultural richness of the programs of the school and the poverty for which the Harlem community has been known. Evidence of this poverty has been well documented and disseminated. In books and articles in newspapers, magazines, and journals, Harlem has been portrayed as a community of economic decay, as exemplified by its dilapidated buildings and decrepit street-corer beggars. Harlem also has been reported to suffer from a social poverty marked by the proliferation of vagrancy, prostitution, and drug trafficking. Perhaps because these economic and social maladies are regarded as serious threats to society, they have been highlighted more often than the uplift that Harlem has been offering to its residents, the nation, and the world. Except for the Negro Renaissance of more than five decades ago, the world has not regarded the Harlem community as a source of rich culture. Actually, Harlem has been a cultural and artistic wellspring for more than two decades. That wellspring has been tapped by the Harlem School of the Arts. Since 1964 the school has been systematically and successfully attracting youngsters from the Harlem community and surrounding areas including all five boroughs of New York City, Westchester County, and northern New Jersey and has cultivated these youngsters' artistic abilities. The school also has grown from a one-teacher, twenty-student project in 1964 to a sixty-instructor, 1,100-student institution in 1985; from the tenant of a church basement in 1964 to the owner of a $3.6 million arts complex in 1985; from an exercise in voice, piano, and music theory