One Year After the Quake: Greenport Gallery Nurtures Haitian Art

A year after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, Fred Lambrou, owner of Artists Gallery on Main Street in Greenport, was thankful that all of the Haitian artists he represents survived.

The catastrophic 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti near Leogane, a town about 16 miles west of Port-au-Prince, exactly one year ago today, with initial destruction and damage from aftershocks taking the lives of an estimated 230,000 people and leaving upwards of a million others homeless and destitute.

Artists gallery, founded in 1989, deals exclusively in Haitian art, and has for a long time been one of the most important sources of Haitian art in the country. Right now the gallery is doing its business online at www.arthaiti.com while closed for a winter hiatus. The shop reopens March 1.

Lambrou told the story of how his friend, Haitian artist Joel Gauthier, escaped any harm during the earthquake.

"He was home, a friend came over, and they went out in the back yard to talk," Lambrou recalled this week. "Then the earthquake hit and the entire house collapsed, but because he and the friend were outside they were safe."

Gauthier, of Port-au-Prince, known for his jungle scenes, has had his work reproduced in publications about Haitian art. His paintings are part of the permanent exhibition at the Haitian Institute in Washington, D.C.

Lambrou said that the quake has not increased the demand for Haitian art or caused prices to rise.

“You would have thought it would have been otherwise," he said. “So many works were lost.”

Lambrou said that one Haitian art dealer who had collected 22,000 works of art over the decades, lost all but 2,000.

“The two biggest art museums in Haiti were either destroyed or terribly damaged," he said.

The Musee d'Art Nader, home to more than 12,000 works of art, collapsed. The Centre d'Art, which helped to launch the Haitian arts movement in the 1940s, is still severely damaged. Murals in the Trinity Cathedral, created by some of Haiti's most renowned artists, also collapsed.

When Lambrou decided to go into the business of collecting and selling art, both his choice of location and choice of Haitian art had a basic reason.

"I owned a house and a building in Greenport and Haitian art offered a type of art that was — and still is — affordable to the average collector," he said. "Haiti has more artists per capita than any other country in the world. It just seems natural to them to apply themselves to art."

Lambrou said he considered the price of Haitian art work might be an effect of the economy.

“In 2009 business was horrible, but 2010 was better—not as good as the old days, but better," he said. "I think things are going to be a lot better this year.”

Lambrou acknowledged that things are still bad in Haiti.

"When Joel Gauthier’s house was destroyed, he came to Florida, contacted me, said he needed money,' he said. "I sent him some money, he sent me some paintings. I try to help out my artists.”

And if Haiti, as Lambrou says, has starving artists like anywhere else, some of the artists have done very well.

"One of the artists just had an architect design a house for him in Switzerland," he said. "Another has put three children through college."