The peek inside artists’ spaces and processes known as Cambridge Open Studios is this weekend, and the city’s arts agency is doing its best to make sure people know – a potential reassurance to participating artists who said they felt last year’s turnout was low, especially compared with the strong showing for May’s Somerville Open Studios, in which more than 430 artists were listed as taking part.
As of Tuesday, Cambridge’s plans includes more than 70 artists. The city is accommodating the creatives seeking to join last-minute, which means the final number is in flux, said Greg Cook, director of marketing and public relations for Cambridge Arts.
“We love Cambridge artists, and this is one of our favorite events. We love this occasion to showcase what everybody’s doing and see people being invited into people’s studios and homes. It’s such a rare treat to be able to meet the artists in person in their spaces and see the amazing things they’re doing,” said Cook, who writes about arts in Greater Boston at the Wonderland site.
To get the message out about Open Studios, the agency posts about the event and its individual artists on social media, has a crew taping up a run of 250 posters, a billboard in Harvard Square, lawn signs and ads that began streaming on WBUR a week and a half ahead of the event, Cook said. During the event, a sidewalk sandwich board will go outside the Street Theory Collective in Central Square to advertise the group exhibit inside.
Hundreds of printed maps to open studios have been distributed to artists for them to hand out. The printed maps are available at Cambridge Arts 344 Broadway, Mid-Cambridge, also open throughout Open Studios as one of the common venues. There’s a digital map built for phones with images of artwork and artist bios and statements.
Though details shift a little over time, and in 2025 there was a disruptive staff health issue, this has been Cambridge Arts’ approach to promoting the Open Studios and its seasonal art markets for several years, Cook said. The agency is not collecting data formally to set its strategy.
Recipients have to be already signed up to see newsletters, but Cambridge Arts has found email to be among its most effective approaches to connecting with the kind of people who will attend Open Studios. “They’re signed up because they want to be part of what you’re doing,” Cook said. “They’re motivated.”
Ellen Ezorsky, a North Cambridge ceramicist, painter and photographer and longtime participant in Open Studios, recalled taking part in a volunteer advisory board that helped with publicity until it was disbanded during the Covid pandemic. A revived group of volunteers could do the same work now, spreading the word earlier and broadly, she said.
“Plenty of people would revolunteer,” Ezorsky said.
Cambridge Arts is open to improvements. “We love this event, we love the artists, we love our community,” Cook said. “When things are not going right, we want as much as possible to try to work with people to make it better.”
Somerville Open Studios began in 1999, while Cambridge’s launched in 2008 as a citywide event that was grown out of versions in North Cambridge and Cambridgeport.
Like another creative celebration where the cities differ – Somerville’s 15-year-old Porchfest draws around 500 musicians; Cambridge introduced its own version last year with 80 – it’s not just age that affects size and vibrancy. Even as a 2017 report on “Arts & Economic Prosperity” declared arts and culture a $175 million industry in Cambridge that deserved protection, city councillors and other officials held anxious and urgent meetings about how artists were fleeing to more affordable communities – including Somerville. “I don’t think we have to imagine it,” Cambridge Arts executive director Jason Weeks said in 2017 of the draining away of artists. “It’s incredibly hard for people to live here.”
Cambridge Open Studios, noon to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday around Cambridge and at the Street Theory Collective, 541 Massachusetts Ave., Central Square.
