In the 1860's, civic and business leaders whose families had made fortunes in the China Trade, textile manufacture, railroads and retailing, sought to influence the long-term development of Massachusetts. To stimulate learning in technology and fine art, they persuaded the state legislature to found several institutions, including the Massachusetts Institue of Technology (1860) and the Museum of Fine Arts(1870). The third of these, founded in 1873 was the Massachusetts Normal Art School.

MassArt was founded to satisfy two imperatives-a business demand for industrial drawing skills, and the belief of educators that training in drawing could promulgate both manual and intellectual skills, and yield even spiritual benefits. As crafted by its two founders, English art educator Walter Smith and Boston Brahmin arts impresario Charles Callahan Perkins, the new institution would produce drawing teachers required in schools throughout the Commonwealth, while at the same time producing professional artists, designers, architects, and scientists. The goal would be to educate people in the creative process, not merely train them to draw. It would "impart knowledge," Smith wrote, of "how to draw, not how to make drawings." He explained, "The process of drawing makes ignorance visible; it is a criticism made by ourselves on our perceptions, and gives physical evidence that we either think rightly or wrongly, or even do not think at all."

Its roots in the economic and cultural dimensions of the Commonwealth have ensured that the college has evolved with the times. Technical drawing occurs on paper and vector graphics programs; art education students work with teachers in the field to develop new curricula for the schools; design students return from internships with a sense of what's required out there today. In myriad ways, the school is geared to develop in pace with the Commonwealth-which it supports and from which it draws its strengths-and the greater world.