sentences:  Efforts to open a community art center on Chicago's South Side began in 1938.Peter Pollack, a Federal Art Project official, contacted Metz Lochard, an editor at the Chicago Defender, about having the Art Project sponsor exhibitions of African American artists, who often had trouble securing space to display their work.Pollack, an art dealer, owned a gallery on Michigan Avenue in Chicago's Loop and had previously displayed the work of African American artists.