Berta Golahny was a longtime visual arts teacher at CCAE, from 1959 to 2001. Her family provided a gift to create the Berta Golahny Awards in her memory. The gift was originally designed to support awards from 2016-2018. CCAE and the Golahny family decided to continue the student awards tradition annually.

Previous student winners include Anne McNevin, Kelly Slater, and Lauren Strand in 2016; Elizabeth Coxe, Kay Hudgins, and Judith Prager in 2017; Sharon Pattison, Ann Haycox, and Donna Haig Friedman in 2018; Mary Gillis, Susan Varga, and Pui Wu in 2019; Margaret Gaw, Jennifer Plym, and Minmin Shi in 2024.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding the exhibition, please email Bryan Ramey, Program Director of Visual Arts and Crafts, at bryan.ramey@ccae.org.

About Berta Golahny

Berta Rosenbaum was born in Detroit. She studied at the Arts Students League of New York on scholarship, the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Iowa. She met Yuda Golahny in Detroit; they married and came to Cambridge for Yuda to study at MIT. Berta taught CCAE painting classes on Monday nights. Many of her students took her class continually for years, creating deep bonds between this extraordinary teacher and her students. In her obituary, one of these students asked, “Now that Berta is gone, what will we do on Monday nights?”

We encourage you to visit this website to learn more: www.golahny.org. Additionally, a large selection of prints by Berta can be found at The Brier Hill Gallery website: brierhillgallery.com