Carmel Art Association

EXPERIENCE DESCRIPTION

The Carmel Art Association occupies a low-shingled building on Dolores Street, its garden entrance easy to walk past if you're not looking for it. Inside, the walls turn over every month with new work by more than 80 Monterey Peninsula artists: oil paintings, watercolors, sculpture, and printmaking, all of it made locally and priced for collectors and browsers alike. The staff are artists themselves, and the pace is unhurried. No chain galleries, no touring exhibitions, nothing imported from outside the Peninsula. Everything on the walls was made within a few miles. Admission is free.

OPERATOR STORY

The Carmel Art Association was founded in 1927 by a group of local artists and has operated continuously as a nonprofit cooperative ever since, making it one of the oldest artist-run galleries in the United States. It represents working artists who live and create on the Monterey Peninsula, with exhibitions rotating monthly.