 The Centre had been established by Dewitt Peters, an American Quaker and conscientious objector who had been sent to Haiti by the U.S. Office of Education as an alternative to World War II military service.Seeing the imaginative works that decorated many voodoo temples, or "ounfò" (), Peters, also an artist, suspected that the country harbored much talent waiting to be discovered.He resolved to find and promote i

Philomé Obin sent Peters, at the Centre d'Art, a small painting extolling U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt for ending the 1915–34 American Occupation of Haiti.