Type Art Museum President Bridget M. Johnson Founded 1 May 1943 | Collection size 120 Curator Scot Meents Owner Board of directors | |
 | ||
Established May 1, 1943 (1943-05-01) Location 2675 Gulf Street, Beaumont, Texas, USA 77703 Similar Dishman Art Museum, Beaumont Children's Museum, Art Museum of Southeas, Tyrrell Historical Library, Babe Didrikson Zaharias | ||
Beaumont art league hosts summer art camp
The Beaumont Art League (BAL) is the oldest non-profit art organization in the Beaumont, Texas area. Now in its 70th year of operation, the BAL continues to host monthly art exhibitions, juried shows, and arts education for adults and children. It also maintains a permanent collection of art and art objects, primarily by local artists.
Contents
Beaumont art league and local humane society team up
History
The league was founded in 1943 by a group of artists meeting weekly at the studio of Robert Stapp who decided to form a working group of painters to foster and stimulate fine arts and crafts in the Sabine area. Notable founding members included Will-Amelia Sterns Price and Tom Tierney. By 1944, the group moved to the YWCA and held its first art exhibition. It continued to hold annual membership exhibitions, traveling exhibitions, workshops, lectures, and summer art colonies taught by such accomplished national artists as Frederic Taubes and Jacob Getlar Smith.
In 1949, the league raised the money to rent a house and formed the Beaumont Art Museum, now the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, which opened in 1950. The league organized many of the museum's activities over the coming years. In 1956, Colonel Sanford Perry Brown and his wife donated the money for a building (the Brown Gallery) at the Fairgrounds in north Beaumont. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the league moved several times, while the museum remained at the Brown Gallery. The Browns donated funds for a second building, named the Scurlock Gallery, in 1967, and the league moved back to these buildings in 1968 and has remained there ever since. The museum expanded several times into other local buildings until finding its home in downtown Beaumont in 1987.
In 1962, the league held the first Tri-State Exhibition, bringing in art from around Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi. In 1998, this became the BAL National Exhibition, taking in art each year from around the country.