Young Artists Explore Home at New Haven City Hall Exhibit
A new City Hall gallery in New Haven features artwork by children under 12, created through a collaboration between the Fair Rent Commission and Yale Center for British Art.
New Haven City Hall has a new gallery this week, and the artists are mostly under the age of twelve.
An exhibit titled “New Haven: This is Home” opened Thursday at City Hall, showcasing artwork by young residents who were asked to answer one question: what does home mean to you? The show runs two weeks and came together through a collaboration between the Fair Rent Commission, the Yale Center for British Art, and the city’s Arts, Tourism and Culture department. Not an obvious trio. But the work on the walls makes the case that it should be.
How It Started
The idea traces back to Bridgitte Thao, a staffer at the Yale Center for British Art who formerly interned at the Fair Rent Commission. She remembered tabling with the FRC at community events, talking to parents about tenant rights and how to contest rent increases, while their kids drew pictures nearby just to stay busy. Something clicked.
Thao reached out to Linda Friedlaender, who runs education programming at the YCBA, and the concept grew from there. In March, the public was invited to visit the museum, and children were given art materials to visualize what home meant to them. The resulting pieces are now hanging in City Hall.
“They’re brilliant,” Thao said of the young artists.
The Kids
Ten-year-old Aanya Wason-Sawhney, a student at Worthington Hooker School who lives near East Rock, drew a deer under a bright sun, birds in the sky, and a sweep of green grass. She wrote above it: “Nature makes me feel at home.” She told attendees Thursday that she hikes almost every day. “If I were anywhere else,” she said, “it would feel different.”
Her 4-year-old sister Leela also had work on display. Leela drew the house her family visits in Rhode Island, centering it around the pool, with a pink figure splashing in the water. “That’s the sun, that’s the pool,” she explained. Their parents, Anjali Wason and Hirsh Sawhney, were there to watch.
Also at the event was Aveline, who came with her father Ken Krayeske, and brought a drawing of her own house.
What City Hall Heard
Mayor Justin Elicker spoke at a press conference kicking off the exhibit, alongside FRC Executive Director Wildaliz Bermudez, city arts director Sha McCallister, YCBA Director Martina Droth, and city Deputy Zoning Director Abdul-Razak Zachariah.
Elicker framed the children’s artwork as more than cute. “Part of this is about opening up a conversation about what a home is, and what we want a home to be,” he said. He noted that many people don’t have the home they want, specifically one that feels safe. “How can we push our state and other municipalities to do more,” he said, on affordable housing?
It’s a pointed question in Connecticut right now. The state has wrestled for years with a housing supply shortage that hits renters hardest, and the Fair Rent Commission exists precisely because New Haven recognized that market forces alone weren’t protecting tenants. The FRC can investigate complaints, mediate disputes, and in some cases roll back rent increases deemed excessive.
Still, a commission can only do so much without broader housing production. Elicker’s comments suggest he sees this exhibit as part of a longer public conversation, not just an arts event.
Why This Matters Beyond New Haven
For Connecticut residents watching from Fairfield County or the Hartford suburbs, this kind of program might look like a New Haven story and nothing more. It isn’t. The underlying tension between rising rents and the idea of home stability is playing out in Stamford, Norwalk, Bridgeport, and in plenty of towns that don’t have anything like a fair rent commission to turn to.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition has repeatedly flagged Connecticut as a state where low- and moderate-income renters face severe cost burdens. New Haven’s approach, pairing tenant protection infrastructure with community engagement, offers at least one model worth watching.
The exhibit runs through late April. City Hall, 165 Church Street, New Haven.
More details on the project were first reported by the New Haven Independent.