Montserrat College of Art is a four-year residential college specializing in the visual arts, located in Beverly, Massachusetts, 23 miles north of Boston. The school was founded in 1970 as Montserrat School of Visual Arts. It was accredited as a college in the mid-1980s at which time it changed to its current name. In 1992 the school moved to its current location off Cabot Street on Essex Street in the Hardie Building, a renovated 19th century school building that serves as the center of the campus. Currently, the campus includes the central Hardie Building, the 301 Cabot Studio Building, apartment-style residence halls, and a number of academic buildings. A new residence hall, the Helena J. Sturnick Student Residence Village, was also constructed and opened for the start of the fall 2009 semester. The school emphasizes the positives of its small size, which allows more academic attention to the progress of each individual student. Montserrat has an active student body of 357 students in fall 2010. The college hosts annual summer conferences with international involvement and several study abroad opportunities.