Connecting

art to community.

Art is essential.

Art brings people together, enriches our community and expands our multicultural understanding.

Art has changed our lives and we believe that it has touched the lives of countless others in our community.

Visual art is all around us, hidden away in homes, studios and classrooms. We know that our community values art. We feel the desire to gather together, to make art, to buy art, to see art.

Art brings joy, drives change, calms nerves, and inspires innovation.

Our mission.

Let’s grow and sustain the creative community in Wellesley.

Let’s change our town for the better by making visual art more present, accessible and relevant.

Let’s create spaces to make, see, engage and connect with art.

Let’s bring people together and celebrate our collective creativity.

Let’s connect artists, makers, collectors, citizens, local businesses and civic leaders with opportunities to collaborate.

And let’s do it for the long haul.

Our story.

Art Wellesley is the brainchild of residents and artists Annie Newman, Julie Vari-Nikolewski, and Laura Robert, three friends with a shared vision. During Covid, they banded together to bring vitality back to their diminished downtown by exhibiting art in now empty storefronts creating a months-long storefront exhibition and two pop-up gallery shows.

With a long history of collaborating on community art projects in Wellesley – from Art in the Park to the Traffic Box Art Program – they decided, in 2021, that the time had come to formalize their broader agenda. Art Wellesley was conceived to make the visual arts an integral part of the fabric of the community.