About 2008 City-Wide Open Studios

Over the past eleven years, City-Wide Open Studios (CWOS) has drawn thousands of visitors to explore New Haven's neighborhoods while discovering artists, galleries, and the treasures of our city.

The 2008 CWOS features one big festival weekend activating five neighborhoods in New Haven including hundreds of local artist's studios, five community-based exhibitions, and many special events and programs.

Located in downtown New Haven, Artspace serves as the festival hub and the site of CONNcentric, an exhibition showing the work of over 100 exemplary artists. From Artspace, festival visitors can pick up a shuttle to the neigborhood centers or join bus, bike and walking tours. New, to this year's event, is the addition of a 400-page bound CWOS Artist Directory featuring a full-page artist profile on each participant, available from Artspace all year as a lasting guide to CWOS artists.

Complete details and an official map with all locations are available at Artspace and in the New Haven Advocate in October, as well as on the CWOS website: www.cwos.org.

Open Studios: Impact

City-Wide Open Studios celebrates contemporary art in all its myriad forms, and is undoubtedly Connecticut's leading visual arts festival. Art dealers and curators from the region and beyond have used CWOS as a resource to discover new artists, plan upcoming shows, and buy art. One of the largest Open Studios programs in the country, CWOS unites hundreds of local artists with the Greater New Haven community.

The 2008 CWOS partners with five Greater New Haven neighborhoods: Westville, Fair Haven, Downtown, Hamden/Newhallville and West Haven. Our goal is to empower neighborhoods by uniting artists working in these neighborhoods with the local community and businesses. We welcome artists from outside New Haven to also engage with these communities by activating temporary studio spaces. Visitors to CWOS are invited to explore these neighborhoods where they will find art in new and unusual spaces; discover local businesses and restaurants; and join guided walking, bike and bus tours connecting all satellite neighborhoods with the festival hub at Artspace.

City-Wide Open Studios is a program of Artspace, a Connecticut non-profit organization presenting local and national visual art, providing access, excellence and education for the benefit of the public and the arts community.