As the means to an end, the arts provide unparalleled opportunities for learning and practicing creativity, imagination, resourcefulness, and self-discipline. They also provide a means of integrating the mind and body. And as an end in themselves, the arts provide answers to the deepest questions of who we are.

Holderness's Carpenter Arts Center houses courses in the studio arts, ceramics, instrumental and choral music, music theory and composition, theatre, traditional and digital photography. Each offering is taught by an artist who is a successful and practicing professional in his or her field.

These artists work and teach in a spacious and sunny facility that offers soundproof rehearsal rooms, a digital recording studio, a digital photography lab, a ceramics studio with eight wheels and a gas kiln, a press for linoleum or wood block printing, equipment for jewelry and stained glass production, a darkroom with 11 enlarger-equipped work stations, a studio for still-life and portrait photography, a matting and critiquing room, student gallery space, and more. Other buildings on campus provide a blacksmith forge and a mural printing darkroom.

One wing of the Carpenter Center is devoted to the Edwards Art Gallery, which hosts shows, in all media, of work by the best artists working in New England. The gallery's opening receptions provide students with opportunities to meet and talk with the artists, and they often appear in classes and school assemblies as guest lecturers.

Drama productions take place in the 325-seat auditorium in the Hagerman Center. Each year two productions are mounted, one of which is a full-scale musical. Students may either take to the stage to receive top-echelon directing or work behind the scenes. Theatre classes address skills in performance, directing, writing, and staging.

Several times each year everyone pauses for a School Night. These are occasions on which the whole school gathers to enjoy the work of a visiting musician, lecturer, or writer. Recent guests have included several New Orleans bands, including Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas, Papa Grows Funk, and Big Sam's Funky Nation as well as poets including Donald Hall, Galway Kinnell, Rives, Ishle Park, and Shihan the Poet.