Still Life Study by Margaret Rogers
About the Santa Cruz Art League
The Santa Cruz Art League is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit arts organization dedicated to fostering creativity and making art accessible to everyone. While our exhibitions remain free to the public, the cost of hosting these programs and maintaining our space is significant.
As a community-funded organization, we do not currently receive government grants, and traditional foundation funding is increasingly scarce. We rely almost entirely on the generosity of individual contributors, membership dues, and class tuitions to fund our operations. Your membership and personal donations are the primary reason we can continue to provide a home for the arts in Santa Cruz.
Our Story
The story of the Santa Cruz Art League begins with a group of local plein air painters known as the Jolly Daubers, led by influential painter Frank Heath. These artists dreamed of a place to show their work locally and support and inspire one another, and from their dreams the Santa Cruz Art League was born. In 1919, the Santa Cruz Art League was founded, with Heath acting as president.
Among the artists of the newly formed Santa Cruz Art League were three prodigious female painters who became known as the “Santa Cruz Three” - Margaret Rogers, who managed the Santa Cruz Arts and Crafts Building in exchange for use of their gallery space for Art League exhibits, Cornelia “Cor” de Gavere, an Indonesian-born artist and recent immigrant from Holland, and Leonora Penniman, a watercolorist who had studied with famed Danish artist Emma Siboni. The Santa Cruz Three were known for their classic plein air style, becoming perhaps the most talented group of female Western artists ever formed. It is from these roots that the Santa Cruz Art League’s dedication to community, diversity, and access to the arts for all ages, genders, and identities began.
In 1928, the Art League held the first of its Annual Statewide Landscape Exhibitions, setting a high standard which was to be continued for many decades. This exhibition has become a historic annual tradition featuring prolific artists from across California, maintained throughout the Depression and paused only briefly during the COVID-19 pandemic. The statewide exhibit still continues to this day.
No story of the Santa Cruz Art League can be complete without the history of our iconic cinderblock building in the heart of Santa Cruz’s midtown. The building was built in 1951 with funds that had been raised through clothesline art sales of Art League members’ work, and the same funds were used to purchase the property where the Santa Cruz Art League still sits. Since then, the Art League gallery has hosted countless exhibitions featuring local artists, in the spirit of our founding members.
Now, over a century later, the Santa Cruz Art League still strives to facilitate a community for our local artists. We are proud to have continued our founders’ legacy for over 100 years by hosting vibrant, diverse, and community-centered exhibitions and events in this historic location. We celebrate the thriving art center we have become, nurturing and expanding the expression of artists in our community. We hope to keep our founders’ vision alive for another century by continuing to support our vibrant community of artists, patrons, and sponsors.