Coleman Center for the Arts has a mission to integrate contemporary art into education, civic life, and community development.
The Coleman Center for the Arts (CCA) is a non-profit organization in York, Sumter County, that uses art to build community and foster positive social change. The CCA sponsors gallery exhibitions, public art projects, and educational programs, and occupies five buildings that house a gallery, living quarters, and workspaces for visiting artists.
The organization was founded in 1985 by York native Dorothy “Tut” Altman Riddick and other local citizens as a means to bring economic activity and creativity to York, a town facing widespread unemployment, poverty, loss of downtown businesses, and social divisions. Artists and curators Shana Berger and Nathan Purath took over as co-directors in 2005 and expanded the artist-in-residence program and focused it on “socially engaged public art.”
The CCA’s education program, known as Art Club, began in 2009 and provides area youths ages 12-18 an opportunity to build skills in visual thinking and gain pre-college experience in a safe and alternative space. The CCA gallery features the work of local artists as well as regional and national artists, and commissions new works as well. Some of the CCA’s more recent projects include an ongoing community garden designed and planted by environmental artists Bob Bingham, Ally Reeves, and Robin Hewlett.
