The Center for Hollywood Art & Culture

The Center for Hollywood Art & Culture has been part of the city’s creative life since 1975, which makes it, by outside accounts, the third oldest arts nonprofit in Broward County. Longtime residents may still know it by its earlier name, the Art and Culture Center/Hollywood, and by its former home on Harrison Street before the organization’s current building at 1770 Monroe Street in downtown Hollywood. Wherever the address, the mission has stayed consistent: connect South Florida residents to visual and performing arts through a working gallery, a theater, a cinema program, and a full calendar of classes.

The Monroe Street building anchors several programs under one roof. The gallery mounts rotating exhibitions that have historically included work by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Georgia O’Keeffe, and David Hockney alongside contemporary and regional shows, so a single visit might pair a museum-caliber print with work from an emerging Broward County painter. The organization also operates a roughly 500-seat performing arts venue that hosts theater, dance, and music programming, plus a cinema series for audiences who want something beyond the multiplex. None of this is treated as separate from the neighborhood around it. Staff describe the center as a community hub first, with an art institution built into it.

Education is where the center’s community focus shows up most clearly. Between classes, workshops, and public events, the organization runs more than 500 sessions a year for children, teens, and adults, along with a dedicated summer arts camp for students ages 7 to 18 and an artist-in-residence program that gives working artists studio time and public visibility. School groups can book field trips and guided tours, and the center welcomes larger group visits by appointment. On the pricing side, the organization has stated that about 95% of participants are able to access its programs for $5 or less, a deliberate choice for an arts nonprofit serving a city with a wide range of household incomes.

The center also functions as a gathering place beyond formal programming. Cuisine for Art, its on-site dining concept, gives visitors a reason to linger after a gallery walk-through, and the venue is available for private rentals, from receptions to corporate events staged inside a working cultural facility. Membership and donor support underwrite much of the free and low-cost programming, and the organization is active on social media for anyone who wants to follow exhibition openings or performance announcements before they happen.

For a Hollywood, FL resident or visitor looking for something other than the beach, the center offers an easy entry point into the city’s arts scene: one building, a short walk from downtown’s restaurants and shops, that holds a gallery, a theater, a cinema, and a classroom all serving the same community-first mission the organization has carried since the 1970s.