ART/WORK: How the Government-Funded CETA Jobs Program Put Artists to Work

At AAI’s Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space and City Lore Gallery, both on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, ART/WORK spotlights the achievements of CETA-funded artists projects in New York City, which sent over 600 visual artists, poets, dancers, performers, and photographers, among many other specialists, into New York area schools, libraries, museums, nursing homes, prisons, and more. In the process, CETA nurtured a diverse artist workforce, provided art services and engagement to communities, and launched the careers of now-prominent artists and arts administrators, as well as beneficiaries who brought their experience to arts-adjacent fields or transferred it to other sectors. It also helped to nourish the community arts movement in New York and throughout the U.S.