Click here for 2016 Masterpiece Gala & Auction photos.

On Saturday night we welcomed guests to the 2016 Masterpiece Gala & Auction at the Pinery. With a spring storm underway, we stoked the fire and traded our stilettos for snowboots. Guests mixed and mingled as they browsed and bid on auction items. We attracted bidders near and far with our new online bidding platform. Highlights of the evening included student performances and the opportunity to purchase photos of individual students captured by Vaughan & Walker Photography. Guests could also purchase limited-edition Masterpiece Notecard Collections of twelve pieces of student art converted into everyday occasion notecards. The cork pull made a popular return to the evening. With Reggie Rivers at the mic the live auction was lively and donors made generous donations during the Raise Your Paddle portion of the evening. Nearly $80,000 was raised to sustain and support arts and technology at CSS. Thank you to everyone who made the event a success. The impact of your giving has sustained and supported arts and technology at CSS by staffing and committing resources to these areas and has tangibly funded the following programs:

• The Arts Department will stage 32 showcases, productions, art shows, and concerts this year. From Holiday Tea and Dessert Theatre to the Vocal Ensemble and Band Concerts as well as the upcoming Spring Musical. In addition students' fine art has been submitted to a wide-variety of art shows throughout the region in addition to being displayed in our galleries. 
• The return of a Middle School fall production as well as the Foundations of Art Class.
• We launched the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) program in Upper School and made significant upgrades campus-wide to support the network for enhanced student engagement with technology. These network improvements impact our ability to drive student-centered learning paired with technology.
• Several teachers will spend the summer designing a new coding curricula and Upper School Introduction to Computer Science class to be launched in the fall.
• Our new teacher device program grants CSS teachers increased access to laptops and Chromebooks for integration with Google Classroom and to connect to important technological tools for student learning.

Winning Items
If you won an item in the auction and were not able to attend the event, you can make arrangements to pickup your item with the Advancement Office. Please feel free to coordinate with Amaya Firestone '11 at afirestone@css.org. 

Be Part of the Success!
If you couldn't join us and would like to still participate in supporting our effort to raise funds to sustain and support arts and technology at CSS, check out these items still available for purchase. These items will close at 12:30 p.m. on Monday, April 25, 2016.