Maritime Art Association

The Maritime Art Association (1935–1945) was a Canadian regional alliance of art clubs and societies, public schools, universities, social organizations, service and civic groups, artists, art students and art appreciators. As the first organization of its type in Canada, the Association offered Maritimers a more democratic and populist arena than art associations in the rest of the country, which tended to be city-based and only a few were province-wide. The Association responded to the need for an active regional infrastructure in the arts; representing groups from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.

Walter Abell organized the Maritime Art Association while a professor of Art at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. The MAA’s constitution was ratified at the Association’s first annual meeting held in Saint John, New Brunswick at the end of March 1935, and Abell was elected its President.

The Association’s objective was: “to promote a knowledge and appreciation of art; to foster art activities in the Maritime Provinces by uniting for cooperative effort, all interested groups and individuals, by securing and offering for circulation, exhibitions of fine and applied art,” as well as “arranging for lectures and for engaging in such other activities to promote these aims.” The MAA attracted a membership of seventeen groups in fourteen centres within two years, and would continue to maintain these numbers for the coming decade. he creation of many local art societies, such as the Fredericton Art Club and another at Charlottetown, were the immediate result of the formation of the MAA.

Through the association's program of traveling exhibitions, lecture series, radio broadcasts on the arts, and various other activities, the Maritime Art Association positioned the arts to become an arena for regional discussion, appreciation and solidarity. The MAA’s exhibition programme of about eight shows per year was its most effective instrument for aesthetic development. The MAA annual exhibition, with its wide variety of regional artists and enthusiastic newspaper coverage, was perhaps the most successful strategy for constructing the identity of the regional art community. Its lecture circuit of speakers from both within and outside the Maritimes was highly promoted by the MAA, and radio talks and later a slide collection would also be part of its cultural mandate.

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