For the first time in nearly three years, people walking past the corner of Union and Purchase Streets in downtown New Bedford saw something unexpected in the windows of the Star Store — art. And in the words of New Bedford-based artist Carl Simmons, whose work has filled the building’s street-facing ground floor windows since December 2025, “people were stoked.”
The Star Store, a 19th century department store-turned-satellite campus for UMass Dartmouth’s College of Visual and Performing Arts, closed in August 2023 due to funding disputes between the university, the city and the state, resulting in protests by students, professors, alumni and the New Bedford art community.
In May 2025, the Star Store was purchased by the non-profit Arts and Business Council of Greater Boston, with the goal of “reimagining and reactivating the building as a public resource to benefit artists, makers, creators and small creative businesses” through its Creative Land Trust initiative, according to the organization’s website.