The Antonio E. Garcia Arts and Education Center, located at 2021 Agnes St. in the heart of Corpus Christi's West Side, connects Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi to the community by providing programs, art exhibits, and meeting places for community organizations.
The Garcia Center offers a variety of programs in art, dance, health and nutrition, family support, and literacy at low or no cost to community members, and it hosts widely popular annual cultural events. The Center features a gallery space with rotating exhibits, computer lab, art room, and multipurpose/dance space.
The center began as the Center for Hispanic Arts in 1993 to showcase works by Hispanic artists and to bring art into the West Side community. It became part of the South Texas Institute for the Arts (STIA) in 1997. The STIA merged the Art Museum of South Texas on shoreline at the mouth of the Nueces River, the Creative Arts Center, and the Center for Hispanic Arts. In 1998, the center was dedicated as the Antonio E. Garcia Arts Education Center, in honor of the artist for whom it is named. In 2004, the responsibility for the center was shifted to the College of Education, and the offerings at the center were expanded to add educational and counseling programming to the arts programming already in existence.
At the Antonio Garcia Center we strive to provide the extensive and unique resources of TAMUCC to the community, its children and their families; to nourish their psychological, academic, artistic and socio-cultural identity, assisting and fostering a sense of value, meaning and belonging in families, their communities and their country; and to encourage the making of free choices on the part of productive, empowered, self-fulfilled and responsible citizens.
