A letter from the Director

Welcome to the Cambridge Art Association (CAA), an art agency founded during World War II to foster an environment supporting artists and art lovers through exhibitions, critique groups, workshops and the sales and rental of members' work in and near Harvard Square in Cambridge Massachusetts.

Today, the mission of the CAA, while constantly evolving to serve the members' needs, remains similar to the 1944 purpose - to provide a supportive environment for the creation and appreciation of art in the community (including the broader community of New England artists) and to encourage developing and emerging artists by showing their work in exhibitions and promoting the art through a sales and rental department. In the year of its origin CAA gave a sponsored a small art auction to support the war effort.

The association annually presents an exhibition of art that comes from 4500 entries representing artists in every state through a National Show with prizes totalling over $8,000. Jurors for this show have included Malcolm Rogers, the Ann and Graham Gund Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Maxwell Anderson, the Director of the Whitney Museum in New York; Robert Fitzpatrick, Pritzker Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Lisa Dennison, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Marc Pachter, Director of The National Portrait Gallery, and Joseph Thompson, Director of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA).

Each spring, the CAA hosts a gala black tie Venetian Night, at our Lowell Street Gallery – located in the oldest wood-frame schoolhouse in Cambridge - to raise funds for senior and special need children's art programs.

Four times a year CAA seeks new artist members - all backgrounds, belief systems and races -- and five days a week welcomes all people who care about art who visit the two gallery spaces, where twenty exhibitions are offered annually. Over 500 artists exhibit in these shows and many have work available through the sales and rental director, Susan Vrotsos.

As the Norma Jean Calderwood Director of the 63-year-old association, I welcome you to our web site and would be pleased to greet you in person in one of our galleries. I believe art offers a way of seeing beauty and peace, joy and pain, and, most of all, hope and promise in the world; a glimpse of permanence in an impermanent world. Please visit us often - on the web, by telephone or in person.

Kathryn Schultz,
Norma Jean Calderwood Director,
Cambridge Art Association