North Shore Arts Association at 95: Looking Back; Looking Ahead

"Ice Bound Vessels" Frederick Mulhaupt, ca. 1920

As NSAA celebrates is 95th Anniversary, we look back at the rich history of Cape Ann and the daily lives of its hardworking people, as faithfully recorded by its resident artists. We are gifted with five senses, but to explore our personal and collective history, one of the most powerful senses is sight.
Visual artists record the world around them; the character of a physical place, the people who populate it, and something so much deeper and harder to capture-their interior lives.
Looking back through old, faded black and white photographs can bring us the grainy facts of a place, but it's in the artists' work we see that place in vibrant color through the lens of the human heart and the mind of the artist who lived and was fully engage in that moment of time. We are transported through time. What a wonderful gift it is to be an artist and what a gift it is to the world!
In 2017, NSAA celebrates our long, proud history and the lineage of fine artists who contributed so much to our understanding of their time and place; leaving us with magnificent works of art to reveal the past and to inspire our futures.
Artists create our futures, imagine and inspire our best selves and hold up a mirror to our times.
Come celebrate creativity with us and our 95th year!

A short history of the North Shore Arts Association

A small sampling of NSAA distinguished past artist members:

"Dorothea in the Woods", Cecilia Beaux, 1897

"Winter Sparkle", Paul Strisik, 1987

"Gloucester Harbor" Emile A. Gruppe

"Rockport In Winter", William Lester Stevens, N.A.