About Us
Heart Gallery NYC , a non profit organization founded in 2006, utilizes photography to raise awareness of, and recruit permanent, loving adoptive families for children in foster care in New York City. In collaboration with the NYC Administration for Children’s Services and the foster provider agencies, Heart Gallery NYC collaborates with notable photographers, who donate their talents to create beautiful portraits of children in need of adoptive families. The Heart Gallery NYC online gallery features these compelling images of the youth, along with their personal narratives, to recruit prospective parents, and advocate for the children's need for loving, "forever families".
History
On March 29, 2001, at the suggestion of a Santa Fe photographer, an adoption worker at the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department brought the expression "a picture is worth a thousand words" to life. The nation's first Heart Gallery exhibit featured compelling portraits of waiting children in the hopes of finding loving adoptive families. The exhibit was a resounding success, attracting more than 1,200 visitors and initiating the adoptions of six waiting children.
National media attention generated because of the project’s success resulted in a virtual explosion of Heart Gallery groups across America, where over 100,000 foster children are waiting to be adopted. Today there are nearly 100 Heart Galleries throughout the United States. Heart Gallery has been featured on CNN, The Today Show, The View, 20/20, NBC, CBS, NPR and many others. Thousands of children have found their forever families as a direct result of Heart Gallery exhibitions.
Heart Gallery NYC is proud to be the first and only Heart Gallery in the nation to advocate for LGBTQ youth by launching PRIDE Exhibits. In addition, Heart Gallery NYC has created projects dedicated to finding mentors for the children, produced intern programs for youth at risk of aging out of care, and utilized the power of photography to raise awareness of another socially relevant cause…homelessness in New York City.
To learn more about Heart Gallery NYC's special projects, please visit Special Projects