Institutional-Community Partnerships: Paving the Way for Urban Art Learners in the 1960s and 1970s

Institutional-Community Partnerships: Paving the Way for Urban Art Learners 

The 1970s are widely remembered as an adverse period in New York City’s history, with citywide bankruptcy, rising crime rates, and White Flight sapping efforts for economic stability. Amidst a failing educational system, urban community arts groups were essential in offering supplementary art opportunities to marginalized city students. Such programs directly benefited from institutional-community partnerships. These partnerships were most effective when participating institutions were committed to culturally responsive interactions with the communities they served. In this paper I explore how a 1974 Community Arts Festival held by the Ziegfeld Gallery of Teachers College, Columbia (TC), epitomizes the ideal modality of support that institutions can provide to the communities in which they reside.

My research on this subject was prompted by a personal inquiry into the rise of U.S. youth incarceration beginning in the 1970s, which disproportionately affected Black Americans. Racial profiling and former President Richard Nixon’s War on Drugs were obvious influences on the increase in youth imprisonment, but I began to wonder how school systems’ failure to invest in this population's creative expression might have exacerbated this issue. Art education provides students with a nonverbal language to express their interior landscapes, respond to the struggles of their community, and reflect upon the broader world. While art should ideally be available in all schools, when it is absent, opportunities for extracurricular art learning become all the more important. My work investigates how TC developed relationships with underserved communities to support youth art initiatives, in response to the dwindling art education in 1960s and 1970s urban public schools. 

Research and Documentation

My exploration of this subject was conducted in close collaboration with TC Special and Digital Collections Librarian Conard Lochner, whose breadth of knowledge helped direct my investigation. While meeting with Conrad, I was first introduced to the Fischer Collection – a comprehensive archive pertaining to the sixth president of Teachers College, John H. Fischer, who served from 1959 to 1974. In order to understand TC’s historical connection to art education in surrounding communities, I first needed to grasp the philosophies which directed the institution at this time. While exploring this collection, I encountered a flyer for the 1974 Community Arts Festival, held by the TC Art and Art Education Department during the final year of Fischer’s presidency. With the knowledge that archives both stand as metaphors, and provide physical traces of larger memories (Steedman & Tollebeek, 2004, p. 239), I question how outreach efforts buried in the Fischer Collection might represent a larger, yet muted history of community-institutional partnerships in the arts.

Down the Drain: Public School Arts Education in the 60s and 70s

Despite integration initiatives in 1954, city schools throughout the 1960s and 70s saw a strong correlation between residential and educational segregation. While superficially, the NYC Board of Education denied segregation, board-sanctioned racial separation persisted, as white families were permitted to bus their children out of districts to avoid zoned schools with predominantly Black student bodies (Burrell, 2003, p. 2). Meanwhile, schools serving higher percentages of Black and Latino students received lesser funding, limited resources, and diminished interest from well-credentialed educators – in effect, creating the conditions for student underachievement (Ostrander, 2015, p. 272). 

Rampant financial inequality in public schools was only exacerbated by a citywide bankruptcy in 1975, when President Gerald Ford refused federal assistance to New York City as a punishment for urban liberalist services, which he deemed lavish (Phillips-Fein, 2018, p. 2). Coupling the onset of financial collapse with already limited access to resources, the curtailment of city art education was set into motion. In the face of the fiscal crisis, “the arts and arts teachers became easy targets for budget cutting…in 1975-76, New York City public schools laid off 15,000 teachers…subjects considered ‘less central’ were first to go” (Bodilly, et al., 2008, p. 10). The budgetary crisis in New York City seeped into all facets of the public domain, but particularly impacted education. While the most heightened effects were not felt until 1975, the slow downward spiral of both funding and access to the arts set the tone in schools for the entire period. 

Fischer’s Philosophies

In 1970 the sitting president of Teachers College, John H. Fischer, drafted a critique outlining the public-school system’s failure to serve students of color from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Fischer’s admonishment of unequal education opportunities faced by millions of students, whom he described as “poor or black or both” (1970, p. 1), directly reflected his earlier career trajectory. Fischer’s progression from elementary teacher to Superintendent in Baltimore city schools guided his focus on mandating integration efforts, for which he earned the Hollander Award for Contribution to Racial Relations (TC Community, 2009). This affiliation with the Civil Rights Movement placed Fischer in an optimal position to be a champion for marginalized New York City communities. 

Systematic partnerships between institutions and community organizations necessitate the role of community champions, or individuals with the stature and record of achievement to facilitate connections between the institutional backer and the external community (Bell & Remer, 1996, p. 148). Mirroring Fischer’s commitment to desegregation, TC stood to support the larger community, even when that community opposed Columbia itself. In 1968, TC established a strike committee to stand behind Harlem community members protesting Columbia’s proposed construction of a segregated gymnasium, colloquially coined “Gym Crow” (Lochner, 2022). While the wider institution of Columbia did not actively support nor accept responsibility for the community it encroached upon, TC demonstrated a commitment to supporting its cultural needs. This very commitment led President Fischer to promote new, liberalizing forms of education which would combine creative artistry and teaching (1970, p. 3). From this point, community arts outreach from TC’s Art and Art Education department broadened. 

Three Key Modalities of Support

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, TC offered three modalities of support to community arts programs. These approaches included organizing space, connections to outside funding, and direct engagement through institutional-community partnerships. The first approach is exemplified by the student-run magazine “What’s Happening,” founded in 1965 as “an outlet for Black students from Harlem,” and expanding over its five-year duration to “a literary magazine with a nationwide circulation” (Avidon, 1975, p. 19). The magazine platformed student artwork – including drawings, poster designs, and printmaking (Figure 1, 2) – and endeavored to establish community events and workshops (Gottesman Libraries, 1969-70). The second approach can be seen through the connection TC facilitated between the Eastman Kodak company and Harlem students. A 1967 letter from the Fischer Collection discusses the camera company’s sizable grant to a Harlem film project, their “permanent loan” of equipment, and the “splendid idea to use the earlier grant of $5000 to establish two Eastman Kodak Fellowships” (Hamden, 1967, p. 1). To conclude this collaboration, TC showcased work produced by city students in its Macy Art Gallery (TC Week, 1967, p. 3). The third and final approach – direct engagement with the neighborhood – set the stage for TC’s expansion of community arts opportunities in Fischer’s final year as president.

1974: A Year of Community Arts Outreach      

Community outreach was a key commitment of TC’s Ziegfeld Art Gallery – as daily operations centered around the goal of instituting links to neighboring communities and school districts (The Arts Students Collaborative, 1974). The Ziegfeld Community Arts Festival was just one example of the TC Art and Art Education Department’s engagement in institutional-community partnership. A neat, handwritten flyer titled, “Community Festival: Art, Music, and Dance” (Figure 3) advertises a five-day festival – equipped with free children’s art workshops, evening events, and a street fair finale (Ziegfeld Gallery, 1974). The festival events, held in collaboration with the Community Relations Committee Grant and multiple neighboring schools, indicate a clear institutional effort to respond to the broader community. In order to create effective community-institutional partnerships, the needs, priorities, and cultural diversity of the target audience had to be acknowledged. Institutions must keep in mind that, “to connect to a community’s heart is to provide meaningful opportunities for its young people” (Gordon & Remer, 1996, p. 219). 

In response to the demographics of the general community, TC organizers of the 1974 Festival intentionally included forms of artmaking with historical connections to diverse cultural backgrounds.                                                                               

For instance, the mural workshops held for adolescents could be tied to the practice of Black muralism, a grassroots effort used to heal emotional landscapes and serve as interactive sites of protest, empowerment, and imagination (Jeffery, 2020, p. 1). The paper-maché workshop for children connects to similar events held at the East Harlem Community Resource Center, which collaborated with TC throughout the 1960s and 1970s (Figure 4), while the ‘Indian and West African Folk Tales’ event evoked traditional, community-based conversations about collective worldviews, illustrated through the aesthetic dimensions of a given culture (Congdon, 2004, p. 22).

Challenging Narratives

The 1974 Community Arts Festival stood to challenge the narrative that New York City education in the 1970s was an overall failure. Despite negligence from governing powers and the difficulties that ensued, communities did not turn their backs on youth populations, who, given the debilitating sociocultural context of the time, needed support more than ever. In the face of active targeting from budget cutting efforts, art educators nevertheless worked to enrich the lives of their students, both inside the school building and outside in community spaces.

Additionally, this festival stood to challenge the idea that institutions are inherently incapable of serving communities of color. Holding institutions accountable for the discriminatory practices they perpetuate is important, however, this should not result in a public belief that such institutions are unable to refocus on meaningful contributions to communities whom they have harmed. This range of outcomes is well illustrated both through Columbia’s tumultuous relationship with Harlem community members and TC’s affiliation with their community arts organizations. 

TC’s history of community engagement, which unfolded in tandem with a period of great turbulence for New Yorkers, demonstrates that community relationships are at the heart of how young people experience their world. This precise experience is what drives art creation for children. Further, communities have the power to protect the educational sanctity of young learners, even when they face risk of disenfranchisement. Through this historical lens, I was able to see that institutions of influence can only effectively serve communities they respond to by employing culturally responsive practices.

Looking Forward

On March 7th, 2025, The New York Times published a list of terms President​​ Trump has flagged the public to avoid, including the phrase “culturally responsive” (Yourish, et. al.). This censorship is one drop in the ocean of Trump’s initiatives to eradicate ‘wokeness’. The  dismantling of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Programs is another critical attack. Much like in the 1970s, New York City school systems today have segregated populations, economic inequity, and a lack of government support. In acknowledgement of these issues, institutions like Columbia have the obligation to stand behind youth populations and the communities who raise them. 

As an institutional partner, TC has historically provided its surrounding community with space to organize, connections to outside funding, and most importantly, direct engagement. In his time as president, John H. Fischer shaped outreach efforts from the TC Art and Art Education Department with his administrative championship of historically marginalized communities. The 1974 Community Arts Festival provides the optimal framework for future institutional enrichment of the arts for local learners. While public schools today are at risk of once again failing students, especially those of color, culturally responsive art education practices are a proven strategy through which institutions can invest in the creative lives of young people. 

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