Dr. Arthur L. Garnes was born in Manhattan, NY, on June 13, 1912. He attended Townsend Harris High School in New York and City College of New York where he obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in 1933. He attended medical school at Howard University in Washington D.C., graduating in 1937, a time when it was very difficult for Blacks to gain access to higher education.
During his five years of surgical training, he developed an interest in plastic surgery. He was on the forefront, because plastic surgery did not become a specialty until 1941. In 1943, after being appointed Assistant Attending in Surgery, he started, with his mentor Dr. Joseph Tamarin along with Bernard Simon, the nucleus of the plastic surgery unit in Harlem Hospital.
In 1963, he was appointed a full attending. In 1965, the affiliation of Harlem Hospital plastic surgery section with Columbia University was initiated.
In 1972, a plastic surgery residency program affiliated with Columbia Presbyterian Hospital was created at Harlem Hospital through the efforts of Dr. George Crikelair, then the chairman of plastic surgery at Columbia Presbyterian, and Dr. Arthur L. Garnes. Dr. Garnes was appointed the chairman of the program and Assistant Clinical Professor of Surgery at Columbia University. He was the first Black American Director of Plastic Surgery in the United States, and the program became the first approved plastic surgery residency program in a predominantly Black hospital.