This is an amazing place to do art. The pottery studio and classes are fabulous with expert teachers that go beyond their jobs. I have grown as a potter because of them. The community of students is wonderful. We all share our knowledge with each other--always taking care of each other too. This is a warm, exciting, and inviting place to complete work. The day workshops are awesome too. read more

We had our wedding ceremony at the Alverthorpe Manor in Sept 2018 and it was great! The site itself provides a dramatic backdrop with the manor, old exterior walls, arch, outdoor stage, old tennis courts, and spots along the walking trails (some photos attached). We chose this place for cost, flexibility of customization and the contacts (Sam & Joshua's Catering) were genuine, good people that I wanted to be around on our big day. )I believe there were major changes in management around 2017, lots of poor reviews prior to that) read more

See all

We send our kids to art camp every summer and they absolutely love it! The staff is super nice, the atmosphere is laid back, and the camp is very reasonably priced. read more

I took ceramics classes during the summer and fall seasons with my instructor Shannon and I loved it! There are many different classes including drawing, metals, clay, and painting all at different times. You are able to choose the day and time that works for you the best. They also provide studio hours to work on projects outside of class to give you flexibility! I took my classes with Shannon who is great at teaching, but also allowing you to experiment and discover your own talents. I've learned so much about clay through her and other students because we were given the freedom to do so! Also, the technician, Brittany, is knowledgeable about clay and is able to give you tips and advice. Not to mention she is super organized and efficient! I have never had a problem having my projects fired and glazed in a timely manner. In general, all staff and instructors know so much and are willing to help you. Also, all the students who take the classes with you are willing to give you a second opinion or tips that they have learned during their time here. So whether you're a beginner or expert, this is a good place to exchange ideas and be creative. I highly value this place and recommend it if you're looking to start a new hobby or try exploring the arts. Overall, the Abington Art Center has the kindest people, abundant resources, and up to date facilities to help you grow in your adventure! read more

Went here for the "FALL FEST" event this past weekend - What a nice outdoor space! The event was a great reason to visit this local gem, the AAC sits on a large property in Abington (Jenkintown) that has a big field (which they had a jazz band playing a concert), and a big pavilion too. Inside there are rooms setup for gallery space but you can see it would be a beautiful place for a wedding. The staff there was very friendly too. My kids loved the showcase of the carved pumpkins, I posted a picture of the AAC pumpkin. read more

Abington Art Center - This was just one of the many pumpkins that were on display - very creative! - Art Schools Near Me - Jenkintown, Pennsylvania

I would give less stars if I could! We go there from time to time to see the seasonal juried show. we walked in the door we have for ages, and we were nastily SCREAMED at! instead of politely directing us where, we just got a nasty attitude. Very hostile environment! read more

The only person who was helpful at all at this place was Jeanne. She was literally running back and forth helping with the bathrooms, art supplies, questions, other classes going on etc. I don't know why the woman inside the building refused to get off her seat and help but it was very stressful to watch. I also watched someone who must donate to the place scream at a worker about an open door and the air conditioning rather than kindly asking about it or giving suggestions. I honestly don't know how any of the events run at all but it must all be Jeanne doing it because I never see anyone else helping or directing. She can get a million star reviews from me but this place itself doesn't have enough caring staff and I would never host an event there. read more

I had become the Scrooge of the relationship world. A marriage that went horribly wrong has soured me from believing in any sort of union between man and women, 2 separate species that were never meant to mate for life. That being said, I'm not a monster. When told of the impending nuptials of my good friends Aaron and Lori, I didn't hiss like a cat and fake the burning of holy water on a heathen. I simply nodded my head and hoped for the best. I mean, I've seen marriage work for some people, right? I think this was my first marriage invitation since my breakup and I wasn't sure how it would affect me. The trepidation also included the anxiety of attending a wedding stag, where I only knew a precious few other guests. The day came and I got gussied up for the first time in years. I'd never been to the Abington area before but the GPS got me to the Arts Center pretty easily. So easily that I arrived way too early, but this afforded me time to check out the area. It's a beautiful little wooded tract, with a neat mansion serving as the Art Center/ home base. The first omen that this marriage was meant to be, is that it was a beautiful fall day and an outdoor ceremony was planned. The second omen for me was when I saw Aaron. Aaron , in the months leading up to the ceremony, defined a typical guy with cold feet. Yet seeing him on his wedding day, I was seeing a man who was sure about his decision and confident about his future. The ceremony was as beautiful as the bride it honored. As I sat in the folding chair, on the lawn behind the arts center, my blackened heart, pumped warmed blood. Love was again redefined in a positive way. It was one if the sweetest ceremonies I'd ever had the pleasure of attending and experiencing my own relationship issues actually made seeing their union more special. The reception that followed, complimented the sweetness of the wedding with it's savory foods , kickass music and wonderful spirits. The highlight being when , in following Jewish Tradition, we raised Aaron and Lori in their chairs and danced around the dancefloor. So I left the Arts Center with a renewed respect for love and relationships. And to quote from one of their handpicked songs the experience created a birdhouse in my soul. And if that doesn't make any sense, it's better than trying to use, " That girl is poison". read more

I had wanted to visit this place for about 4 years before I finally made it. Me and a buddie went for their Eco Art fest about a month ago. It was great even if small and not too well attended (better marketing needed?). The highlight was a guided tour of the sculpture garden. All of the sculptures are temporary and meant to degrade in place over time, what a neat concept! There is definitely a eco bent to the place which I am in tune with, and the indoor art gallery reflects this theme also. The center also offers art classes, though I have never taken one. Has anyone taken one and would like to share their experience? Today I took my father to the center for a visit and we had a great time strolling through the sculpture garden and then shopping for unique gifts at the gift shop. read more

I got married here in May of 2010 and feel ashamed it's taken this long to write my glowing review. Everything about our experience, from the walk through, to the follow-up calls, to the personal attention from Sharon and her staff, to the actual event was wonderful. Here are the things I loved about this place: - The grounds are beautiful. - Sharon, the wedding coordinator, was easy and wonderful to work with. - The outdoor pavillion was comfortable and accommodated all 180 of our guests! - Speaking of our guests, they had a blast, and couldn't stop talking about the facility. If you're looking at places to get married in the area, consider calling Sharon and stopping in for a tour. read more

we wanted to have our wedding outside and we searched for weeks to find the perfect place. After about 25 different sites, we immediately knew the Art Center would be perfect. The grounds are amazing, to say the very least. The outdoor gazebo is deceptively large, plus it's got radiant heating, fans and brand new plastic "doors" to pull down in case it rains. Sharon Blazick, the rental coordinator was a doll. No matter how crazed we were, she was always kind and easy-going. We called her with buckets of stupid questions, but she handled everything with ease. And when our big day finally crept up on us, she made sure everyone was happy and taken care of. Thankfully, I won't be getting married again. But, there are plenty of other parties to be held! read more

I was a guest here for a Bat Mitzvah this past weekend, really nice place to have an event like this. The inside has art gallery-type rooms, and outside there is a large field and a big pavillion where part of the celebration was. I've been to alot of these (Bar/Bat Mitzvahs) and they're usually in a hotel (blah blah) or an event hall (boring); So I'm happy this one was at someplace different and (really) better than the usual. I really liked how much room there was, and while this is a historic kind of place... it had modern elements that made it work. The bathrooms were updated and clean, and (not that this matters to everyone) but it's also an xfinity wifi hotspot, so I was totally connected while I was there for a few hours. The food and the service was good! The people working at the event were really nice, you could tell that they were working hard to make the party great. Very happy to see that for my friends and family that were having their daughter's Bat Mitzvah there. read more

We had our wedding recently (Spring/Summer 2014) at the AAC and overall had a great experience. It is a beautiful venue for a wedding, especially for an outdoor ceremony, and the pavilion was the perfect place for an open-air reception. With full use of the main house, the patio, and grounds you also have the option to have the food/bar indoors or outdoors. I really liked the fact that guests would not have to drive anywhere between the ceremony and reception. The house and the surrounding area make for beautiful backdrops for wedding photos. In reading some of the other comments on here, I have to say I did not at all have a negative experience with the AAC staff. Our events coordinator responded to our emails in a reasonable amount of time and, importantly, was willing to meet us at the site (a couple of times!) to discuss logistics. The staff was generally friendly and helpful. I would say that this is not solely (or mainly) a wedding venue and so the staff will not fawn all over your every desire, but I thought we were treated well and that our questions were always answered. If, like I was, you are looking for a beautiful outdoor space to have your wedding, I would definitely recommend the AAC. read more

We had our son's first birthday party at AAC where they have several different programs for various ages. Given that the age of the attendees was anywhere between 1-5, we went with the "messy hands" painting party. On their website, they offer the following: - Professional Art Teacher - Age-Appropriate art lesson and activities - All materials and supplies We will revisit all of these throughout the review, but the party was lacking in ALL areas... We arrived at the center a half hour before the party with 2 cars filled with food and decorations only to see that we were locked out of the building along with the instructor for the class. Someone arrived shortly after but this delay set off a chain of events that compromised our ability to enjoy the party. First off, the room was filthy when we arrived. There was crushed goldfish crackers on the floor min plain sight. This was extremely worrisome that the room was not at a minimum swept out before our party. From there, our guests arrived at 11 and we expected the art portion of the party to begin shortly after everyone settled in. Instead. the instructor (an overwhelmed teenager who by no means fit the description of "professional art teacher") spent until 11:30 gathering supplies. I'm not quite sure what took so long, but you can imagine that in that idle half hour, we began to lose the interest and attention of a toddler audience, including both of our own kids. The first exercise was to create "fireworks" using some paint and a plastic fork. It was painful to see the instructor struggle around the table as nearly every single glue-stick she pulled out of the box was dry or empty. Meanwhile, the grandmothers in attendance at the party were the ones preparing the paint for the kids, literally squeezing gobs onto cardboard pallets as the instructor worked out the glue fiasco. Once the children had their supplies, no instructions or demo was given to them. One of the grandmothers had to prompt her to explain to everyone what they were supposed to be doing. As the kids worked away, the instructor then had to leave (again) to find more supplies and when she returned, once again the grandmothers had to help her with materials as they cut lengths of paper streamers for the next project. At this point, I left to get food since we had ordered ahead from a pizza shop for a noon pickup and we were barely 20 minutes into the art. I assume that project turned out better than the first as by the time I got back, the artwork was over. Our main issues were: 1. Facility was dirty. 2. Family members having to work instead of participate in the party. I seriously have no idea what would have happened had the grandmothers not stood up and taken over. We would probably still be waiting for glue-sticks. 3. Overall lack of value from party cost. I don't know how the money that we paid is appropriated between the facility, the materials and the instructor, but all were poor and not even close to being worth that much. The instructor, while decent enough to apologize to us throughout the party, was completely overwhelmed, either by the delay or the age group or both. She contacted my wife prior to the party to get a headcount with ages, but never discussed what projects they might do at the party. In the 40 minutes that we actually did art, I'd say she had at most 5-10 minutes of interaction with the kids. It was the grandmothers once again going around the table to see what the kids were doing them, encouraging them and talking with them. In the end, we wound up with the equivalent of 50 sheets of constructions paper, some paint, stickers and glue between the 12 kids. The materials certainly don't warrant the cost, nor did the dirty room. Upon seeing the types of parties available at the center, we were excited to have a toddler dance party there for our older son, who loves that kind of stuff. But after our experience over the weekend, I can't see us using your facility for a party ever again and certainly would not recommend to anyone who would ask. The consolation here is that the kids had fun and will never have any idea of the shortcomings we experienced. But as a parent and a paying customer, the experience has left us with a bad taste. We tried to express several times to the event coordinator, Julie, how disappointed we were in the hopes that *maybe* we would get some of our money back. Instead she offered us discounts for AAC events and hoped that this wouldn't deter us from hosting another event there. ZERO chance of that happening! read more

We had our wedding at AAC in September 2013. Overall our experience extremely stressful and although the outdoor venue could be beautiful we would never recommend it to anyone because the staff is unprofessional and grounds are not properly maintained. We booked our date more than a year in advance and during this time our wedding coordinator contact changed three times. This should have been our first indicator of a poorly run organization. Next during a visit to AAC a few months before the weeding we noticed that they installed a large, intrusive banner with their corporate sponsors logo on it on the side of the outdoor stage. Who would want this visible during their wedding ceremony or in their wedding photos?? We asked and AAC was unwilling to take it down for the wedding. We had settle for an alternative ceremony site within their campus. Our next problem was discovered the week before the wedding during an onsite visit with the caterer. We found that a 3' x 40' strip of grass right in the middle of our alternative ceremony site was missing! Apparently there was a wedding there over a month prior and they laid a runner down to create an aisle way which killed the grass and turned the area into a mud pit. I immediately attempted to contact the Private Events Manager but her office was closed at the time. I was able to reach the Executive Director of AAC and she understood the situation completely and assured me that new sod would be installed before our wedding and that the Private Events Manager would see to it. The next day the Private Events Manager called me and informed me that they would be using a liquid seed on the area and installing sod would not be possible. This was on the Wednesday before our Saturday wedding and if you know anything about grass seed you know that it doesn't grow in three days. I told the Private Events Manager that I was able to source sod locally and was willing to also help find someone install it. She became very disgruntled with me and threatened to hang up on me! She also said that the until she received our final payment, the problem would not be resolved. How unprofessional! They never even sent us an invoice for this payment! Later that day we went down to AAC and paid our balance in full and met face to face with the the Private Events Manager. She never once apologized for the way she spoke to me on the phone but told us that they were attempting to find someone to install sod and if they couldn't get anyone they would remove the banner on the outdoor stage so we could have our ceremony there as we originally planned. If they would have just removed the banner in the first place, the whole mess could have been avoided! It's a real shame because with some much needed maintenance and a professional events manager the center could really be a wonderful outdoor venue. In the end everything got resolved but it was definitely not worth the added stress. read more

Great place but the pottery class instructor SUCKS instructor not friendly until you are some hot chick on fire he will be hovering around you like a bee to help you otherwise you have to scream to get some help read more

My wedding here was absolutely perfect! It was so so beautiful!!! Better than I expected, just perfect. We were sweating buckets, so it would have been nice to have some air conditioning, but aside from that it was amazing and I highly recommend this location for your weeding. My wedding was at night, in the pavilion. We hardly used any decorations except for some lights, and that was all we needed. read more

Abington Art Center revamped the ceramic program offering open studio night and new instructors for kids and adult classes.

My fiancé and I had met with the previous event coordinator Sam back in August to view the property to have our wedding ceremony at the location. We met with Sam who very friendly and showed us around the entire property explaining all the various places we could have our ceremony. She went over the cost and even mentioned that we could decide on the ceremony location two days prior to the event and the backup location would be the pavilion in the case of rain. She even mentioned to us that she would check the weather the week before our wedding to see if we would need to relocate it to the pavilion. After going home and discussing further we decided to book the event. I spoke with Sam and she addressed my additional questions about the contract (there was even an error in the amount of the security deposit since two different amounts were stated that she needed to fix.) When speaking to her she did mention again that we could change the ceremony site up to 2 days prior to the wedding to allot her enough time to move the chairs. The contract even stated that chairs were included (she verbally told us 150 were included we would have to pay for any additional ones, she even mentioned she could set up a table for us for water since the ceremony was in July and another one for the unity candle). We agreed that, that would be sufficient. In November I spoke with the coordinator again and asked to pay our entire balance of the contract in full even though an additional payment wasn't due until April and the remainder wasn't due until June since our wedding would be early July. I also asked her some additional questions about if I could have a horse and carriage pick us up after our ceremony by the concert area and she said that would be perfectly acceptable as long as the horse had a bag so the droppings didn't dirty their property. (When we viewed the property she even showed us the road near the concert location that we could drive a car to, to drop off our one guest who is wheelchair bound) Based on our many conversations the contract was paid in full months in advance to ensure we had one less thing to worry about on our big day. I contacted the art center once more on March 6, 2017, to find out information on dropping off the Arch and backdrop we had purchased and made for our wedding ceremony. Since our last discussion with Sam we discussed the ceremony at the concert location and we wanted an arch to get married under. At this point in time I found out that Sam was no longer employed at the art center. I understand people come and go so it wasn't too much of a concern for me. However, when I spoke to the new coordinator Lydia, she seemed to have trouble finding the information to our event. I had to reinform her that it was a wedding ceremony, the time, and the amount of people. Most of this information was on the contract so I'm not quite sure where the disconnect was. Not only was she not aware of the type of even we were having but she now was telling me that if we wanted our wedding ceremony at the concert location we would have to pay additional fees as well as rent chairs. If this was the case how could we possibly rent chairs 2 days before our wedding? I informed her that we paid in full and our contract even stated that chairs were included and she said that Sam probably did state that but that was most likely the reason why she was no longer at the art center. Our wedding ceremony was now less than 4 months away, we paid our contract in full, whether or not the previous event coordinator charged us less, or didn't follow policy how can you tell us that we owe you more money when our contract states otherwise? My finance and I were so upset that this was being communicated after we had spent so much time discussing our event and planning it and now they were no longer willing to honor the contract. I couldn't believe how unwilling they were to honor their own contract and our previous agreement with Sam. They even told us they weren't willing to honor anything their previous coordinator had agreed to with us. If you misquoted the price and we have a contract how can you change it especially being 4 months away? The worse part was they couldn't even tell us how much more they wanted to have our ceremony outside by the concert. They kept giving us vague amounts for a setup fee, and chair rental fee which apparently they now make you go through a third vender which is all information no one told us about. I even specifically remember asking Sam to see the chairs since we looked at a different site earlier that day and that was one of the reasons we picked this site. In all honestly I would never want to give this center a dollar of our money after the way they treated us. I even had to contact them. What if I never called them would they have dropped this bomb on us a week before our wedding? Luckily I was able to find a new ceremony location that is much more accommodating and organized. read more

Where to start.... The Art Center itself is a beautiful location. We had our wedding September 2014 and it was a perfect time, perfect weather. The staff, on the other hand, were so disappointing. We booked out wedding a year and a half in advance and in that time had 3 different Private Events Manager!! It was very hard to communicate and get answers. Not exactly what you want when you are spending thousands of dollars!! The evening of our rehearsal we had no staff there to direct us or to show us where things were. Our caterer was J. Cabot Catering, which is one of three caterers that the Art Center has you choose from. The owner, Gina, promised us the world and told us that we did not need a wedding planner because she had years of experience and that her and her staff would help us with everything. Gina was nowhere to be found the night of our wedding. She was very unprofessional and the meal options we agreed on is not what was served! Her servers were amazing and very helpful but Gina let us down big time! At the end of it all, we were hit with a very large bill of "damages" (clogged toilet, left over balloons). "Damages" that could have been avoided if perhaps our "wedding planner" ,private events manager or the front desk receptionist of the Art center were available to be told. NO ONE WAS THERE! read more

How to love the art of non-connoisseurs, the architecture of the extraordinary museum, modern garden a magical place and the discovery of each room, a day was too short and we have to come back as before so it works has struggled to assimilate ... really a great moment of happiness and discovery, a view of Jenkintown,PA,exceptional. read more