Video Credit: Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium Afro-Caribbean Jazz Performance with Dr. Mambo and Experience Ensemble at 95 South in Crown Heights

Art, music and culture are alive in Crown Heights . . . We don’t want to be too hasty with the declaration, but there are signs that a burgeoning art scene may be forming in Crown Heights. If the existence of Crown Heights Creative – the Crown Heights blog dedicated to the local Crown Heights arts community – wasn’t evidence enough, we’ve found more. For instance, in the past year alone, three art galleries have opened up in Crown Heights [NP1].

• 1158Dean Art Gallery – About a month ago we ran into Gary, owner of 1158Dean art gallery, a new contemporary African Art Gallery housed in a brownstone located at – you guessed it – 1158 Dean Street (between Nostrand and Rogers). Though they have been hosting various events, the gallery is not officially slated to open until September. 1158 will display works of contemporary African art, various fashions and even will host independent film screenings. We got a hint of the flavor the gallery, thanks to Gary who invited us in for a reception he was hosting about a month or so ago.
• Urban River Arts – Located at 690 St. Marks Avenue (between Rogers and Nostrand), Urban River Arts made Crown Heights its home just about six months ago. Its first exhibitions, “Portraits of Obama”, was featured last month in Danny Simmon’s Corridor Gallery. They even offer art classes, which of course will help inspire more artists in this growing art community.
• Superfront – We’ve featured stories about Superfront in the past. Superfront is architecture gallery which experiments in creative collaborations between contemporary architecture and the arts. The gallery is located on the Crown Heights side of Atlantic Avenue near Brooklyn Avenue.

Notably, there have been a couple of concerted initiatives to attract artists into the neighborhood. First there were the plans by the non-profit group, Artopolis, to develop an artist based live-work complex in an old brewery located at 945 Bergen Street. Unfortunately, those plans later yielded to alternative development plans, as the site was sold to a different developer last year. More recently, there was a move to attract artists into the building at 770 St. Marks. However, from accounts, bad practices by the landlord have shrouded the effort in controversy. These false starts aside, the newer signs of art life are emerging undoubtedly thanks to the cultural institutions already rooted in the community:

• Art –Well known institutions such as the Brooklyn Children’s Museum and (though not in Crown Heights – but just right across the street) the Brooklyn Museum are anchors of art and culture in Crown Heights. Their prominence has been driven, in part, by the Heart of Brooklyn which promotes the 6 largest cultural and art institutions in Crown Heights and Prospect Heights –Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Botanical Gardens, Brooklyn Public Library, Prospect Park, and Prospect Park Zoo.   There are other locally known institutions, such as Five Myles art gallery, which for ten years has showcased experimental works of under-represented artists. According to our chat some time ago with founder and director, Hanne Tierney, Five Myles is highly regarded in the larger art world well beyond Crown Heights.
• Community Art - Crown Heights Youth Collective is not only a youth development organization founded and led by Richard Green, but for more than 30 years it has also sponsored many of the community murals that we see around town. It has its own gallery space in its office on Rogers.
• Music – On the musical side of things, there is the Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium which, for the past decade, has spearheaded the “jazz renaissance” in Central Brooklyn by hosting numerous jazz events around Central Brooklyn.  Additionally, the popular local favorite, Tavern on Nostrand, has experimented with free jazz nights (ßcheck out the great write up on the new owners, one of whom used to own a jazz club).
• Culture – On the cultural side of things, are the Chassidic Art Institute and Carlos Lezama Center for Caribbean Culture (we’ve called and dropped by the Center to learn more about what they do, but thus far have not been able to reach anyone. If anyone has any info, please do share). There is also the Weeksville Heritage Center, which led by executive director Pam(ela) Green, is responsible for the promotion of the site of the historic 19^th century free black community in Brooklyn known as Weeksville (the Hunterfly Road Houses have been recognized by the federal government for their cultural importance through the national historic landmark program).   As part of their art repertoire, the Heritage Center also hosts a summer performance and concert series. To boot, Pam informed us that the center is in the midst of constructing a state-of-the art performance and educational program space at the site.

Add to the list, the historical roots of arts in Crown Heights. Once upon a time the Black Lady Theater (Slave #2) and the Kingston Lounge stood in their full glory at 746 Nostrand Avenue and the corner of Kingston Avenue and Bergen Street, respectively. The Kingston Lounge was a small jazz club that opened in 1944 and was one of the better known jazz clubs in Brooklyn. Though the Kingston Lounge has fallen into a lamentable state of disrepair and neglect since the 1980s, there is still a resounding demand for these types of art venues in the neighborhood. Wouldn’t it be great to see an institution like this revived!

[NP1] There’s also the Pluto Gallery, at 730 Classon Avenue, which appears to have been open for at least three years now, though we were not able to uncover much information about the establishment, other than what is available through the website. Anyone know if it is still open?

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