Our Mission

Artists working in weaving studio

Gateway is dedicated to providing individualized, arts-based services to adults with disabilities, and supporting meaningful lives and careers in art.

Gateway Arts in Brookline, Massachusetts, is an internationally acclaimed studio art center, gallery, and store supporting meaningful lives and careers in art for adults with disabilities. For nearly fifty years Gateway Arts has nurtured the creative talents of artists with diverse diagnoses, strengths and needs.

Over the course of a week between 75 and 100 adults with disabilities work and develop their careers at Gateway Arts. These artists create work and master new processes with the encouragement and support of a professional staff of artist-facilitators. Gateway artists work in professional studios and exhibit and sell artwork in our Brookline Village store and gallery and online. The artists receive a 50% commission on all art sales.

Artists come to Gateway Arts with an interest in or talent for fine art and hand crafts, and a distinctive narrative or perspective to share with the world. Artists engage in the development of their own career by creating their own goals.  With the mentorship of staff, artists choose their mediums and develop products to sell, developing skills in various mediums: drawing, painting, collage, cartooning, sculpture, ceramics, fiber art, weaving, mixed media, jewelry making, filmmaking, creative writing, and new media platforms.

Gateway Arts is an established leader in the field of arts-based services and career development. As such, Gateway Arts is continuously evolving and adapting while remaining steadfast in its commitment to the growth and evolution of programming to meet the diverse interests, strengths, and challenges of emerging populations.

    This is a place where you can develop skills, receive recognition, and do the work that you love. What we care about most is that each artist has told the story of their life through art, and that they feel a part of the society and the community that they live in. They feel part of the art world.

    And when you ask “What do you do for a living?” they say, “I’m an artist.”

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