about saalm

The San Antonio Art League was organized in March 13, 1912. Representing several art groups, the founders sought to achieve a three-fold goal; to provide artists with a place to exhibit their works, to acquire paintings for the public's enjoyment, and to found an art school. In 1926, the Art League began what was to become a 45 year alliance with the Witte Museum, sharing space. A dream was realized in 1927 when the Museum of Art school was born.

During 1927, 1928, and 1929 the San Antonio Art League conducted the Texas Wildflowers Competitive Exhibitions. These competitions were made possible through the generosity of Edgar B. Davis. The Davis Competitions, as they became popularly known, proved to be among the most significant cultural events in Texas during those formative years of the twentieth century.

The Art League experienced encouraging progress until World War II. In early 1942, the school closed for "the duration". Mrs. Marion Koogler McNay, a wealthy arts patron, and graduate of the Chicago Art Institute, assessed the situation. Thanks to her generosity, the Art League continued classes in a spacious aviary on the McNay Estate. Then, circumstances forced another move, this time to the Belgian Pavilion at HemisFair Plaza. After a brief stay, the Art League moved again to the Koehler Cultural Center. The Otto Koehler's had given their mansion to San Antonio Community College, and Mrs. Koehler requested that they allow the San Antonio Art League to office there.

Needs grew, times changed, and the Art League once again needed a home. More security and proper temperature control were prime requisites. The ideal opportunity arose in the King William Historic District, one of San Antonio's most notably distinguished areas. Within this highly restricted And historical environment home is, at last, a permanent place.

In the late 1890s, Mrs. Henry P. Drought (nee Ethel Tunstall) organized several groups of art enthusiasts within the San Antonio community. In her pursuit to provide free access to quality artworks at a time when exposure to art was the privilege of the well-to-do, she brought together interested individuals who came to form the nascent associations that would become the San Antonio Art League in 1912, later chartered as an official non-profit organization in 1926. Though San Antonio was the largest city in Texas at the time, it did not have a network by which to support local artists nor any museum. As San Antonio’s First Lady of the Arts, Mrs. Drought began a legacy that continues to this day.

On March 13, 1912, a small group gathered at San Antonio’s Carnegie Library Hall.

Having recently become aware of the Fort Worth Art Association, they had invited Mrs. Charles Shubert of Fort Worth, to describe the Fort Worth Art Association’s founding and discuss its purpose. At that meeting, with Mr. W. L. Herff presiding and Dr. J. W. Carhart acting as chair, the Art League officially adopted a constitution and by-laws.

The next order of business was to elect officers: Herff was unanimously elected president, Mrs. Drought 1^st vice-president, Mrs. M. C. Florian 2^nd vice-president, Mrs. Floyd McGowan secretary, and Mrs. E. S. Maury treasurer. In addition, a ten-member Board of Managers was elected. The sculptor Pomppeo Coppini, whose studio now serves as another of San Antonio’s cultural repositories, had been invited as the Art League’s first invited guest speaker.

The object of the Art League was to establish a free gallery for the public view — a goal the Art League maintains to this day — and to foster knowledge of and interest in art by means of exhibitions, lectures, and classes. To finance its goals the Art League was to

solicit popular subscriptions toward a fund for the purchase of one or more objects of art each year. Acquisitions were to be housed in the Carnegie Library until a suitable gallery could be provided. The choice of the library was fitting in light of the Art League’s desire to make its collection available to the general public free of charge.

A month later, in April 1912, the Art League took up the discussion of its first purchase. A committee composed of Mrs. Drought, Miss Florian, Mrs. McGowan, Mrs. Stuemke, and Dr. Moody — charmingly called the Committee of Pictures — was established to recommend a painting for purchase, and the first subscription contributions were solicited. On that day Mr. Herff and Mrs. Drought each pledged $25 and Mrs. Williams $15. Sixty-five dollars not being sufficient to purchase an appropriate artwork, even in 1912, it was decided that a circular letter be sent to select individuals, to be followed by a personal appeal.

In May, the Committee recommended the purchase of Sun and Mist by Mrs. Charlotte B. Coman of New York, for $400. Julian Onderdonk presented a talk on Mrs. Coman, and the committee’s recommendation carried, though the funds raised at that point were short by half. Tickets were sold to raise the balance, though it is not clear from the record to what a ticket purchase entitled its donor other than recognition. An exhibition of paintings by the Onderdonk family was planned. By May of the following year, the League was able to purchase Portrait of a Boy by Mrs. Myrtle McLan, and early in 1914, Julian Onderdonk and his father each promised to donate a painting to raise awareness of and interest in the Art League. In 1915, Jose Arpa’s Irish Flats was chosen for purchase, and the San Antonio Art League was firmly underway, gradually adding impressive artworks through subscription purchases and donations from artists and patrons.

A gap in the Art League’s minutes from 1916-1920 leaves us with no specifics for those years, though the League continued to mount exhibitions of invited artists’ work at various venues around the city, often at the Army YMCA. In 1921, it was proposed that the League acquire the Old Market House to house its collection. The City of San Antonio had plans to widen Market Street, and suggested its willingness to cooperate with moving the structure to Brackenridge Park, though the proposition never came to fruition.

Nevertheless, art acquisitions continued with a George Innes, a Colin Campbell Carter, and a blue bonnet painting by Julian Onderdonk in 1922. The problem of a permanent home persisted, however, and became more pressing when in 1923, Mrs. Maxwell Krueger offered the League ten paintings with the proviso that should a permanent home not be secured within two years the paintings would revert to the Krueger estate.

The library hall where stacks had yet to be installed still served as an exhibition space. When that space was completed for library use, the library offered the area of the old stacks — a mere thirty linear feet. A committee composed of Mrs. Branch, Mrs. McGill, and Miss Price secured a room in the Frost Building rent-free, allowing the Art League to continue to acquire artworks and mount exhibitions.

In 1926, the League moved to three upstairs rooms in the Witte Memorial Museum, beginning what was to become a 45-year alliance. The City of San Antonio agreed to finance the Art League for its first year in the Witte, and at the April 1 meeting, Mrs. Drought made an announcement that would establish a precedent that the Art League continues each year with its annual juried Artists Exhibition. “Mrs. Drought told of the prizes offered for paintings of Texas Wild Flowers. The money is given by a member of the Art League who is a lover of Texas wild flowers and art. The $5,000 prize is to go to the donor [artist] and the $1,000 prize to the San Antonio Art League, the [prize] donor’s name being with-held.”

The name being withheld was that of Texas oilman Edgar B. Davis of Luling. Over the course of the three years that Davis supported the exhibitions his generosity would

allow the Art League to amass one of the most important collections of regional art in Texas, impressive in its quality and scope even from a national perspective. The move to the Witte was commemorated through the month of November 1926, with an exhibition featuring the work of Texas artists. Dawson Dawson-Watson chaired the selection committee made up of Mrs. McGill, Eleanor Onderdonk, Mrs. Taylor and Jose Arpa.

Though the current exhibition focuses on works outside the Davis competition acquisitions in a conscious attempt to investigate other aspects of the Art League’s collection, Davis’s influence is such that his contribution merits considerable mention here. Davis had made millions as an oil speculator or, in the nomenclature of the day, a wildcatter. Among the wealthiest and most influential Texans of the ‘20s, Davis, though not an artist himself, was possessed of a keen desire to herald Texas art and artists. Titled the Texas Wildflowers Competitive Exhibitions, and popularly known as the Davis Competitions, the exhibitions that Davis underwrote continued though ‘28 and ‘29.

The 1927 regulations required that entrants focus on wildflowers. Subsequent years extended subject matter to cotton picking and ranching. These competitions proved to be among the most significant cultural events in Texas during the formative years of the 20^th century, instrumental in forging the state’s emerging art community and catapulting Texas art into the national limelight. The record-setting cash purchase prizes and the nationally broadcast publicity for the exhibitions attracted artists from all over the country, including founding members of the Taos Society of Artists, W. Herbert Dunton, Jose Arpa, and O. E. Berninghaus, among others.

surrounding the exhibitions further attracted attention. The more than $53,000 in prize money given over three years and the more than $350,000 spent on events and traveling exhibitions were instrumental in forging the state’s emerging art community. Although an important part of the cultural and artistic history of Texas, these exhibitions have, until the relatively recent resurgence of interest in Texas regional art, remained surprisingly obscure.

In her forward to William E. Reaves, Jr.’s book documenting Davis’s contribution, Texas Art and a Wildcatter’s Dream, Cecilia Steinfeldt calls the Davis competitions a “milestone in the saga of Texas art history.” Yet just as the stock market crash of October 1929 both closed and opened eras in American life, the end of the Texas Wildflowers Competitive Exhibitions in 1929 marks a turning point in the artistic life of Texas. The Davis Collection constitutes a benchmark of Impressionist expression in Texas art. Subsequently professional artists turned first to Regionalism and then to various Modernisms as expressive styles.

The Onderdonk family’s involvement with the Art League was from the beginning not only financial but enormously personal. Eleanor Onderdonk, especially, was instrumental in the acquisition of artwork and the driving force behind the organization of a demanding annual exhibition schedule. Take as an example the exhibition slate for February-March 1936, which alone runs as follows:

In addition to exhibition calendars consisting principally of contemporary regional artists’ work, Ms. Onderdonk orchestrated a multitude of exhibitions, bringing to San Antonio

everything from major invitational exhibitions to Taos-Santa Fe exhibitions; exhibitions of historic miniatures, ceramics, photography, prints, and soap carvings; Russian icons and Tibetan banners from the Roerich Museum; the Philadelphia Artists Exhibition; Pan-American exhibitions; the American Federation of the Arts exhibitions (with which the Art League had a long-standing association); an exhibit of contemporary art sponsored by the Business Machines Corp.; and organized loans of individual pieces and collections to the Art League for specific exhibitions.

In 1927, under the auspices of the Art League, the Museum of Art School was founded and flourished until World War II, when many cultural institutions in the United States sacrificed their endeavors to the war effort. In early 1942, the Museum of Art School likewise closed for the duration of the war.

Marion Koogler McNay, a wealthy arts patron and graduate of the Chicago Art Institute, whose estate became the McNay Art Museum, facilitated the continuation of the Art League’s classes in an aviary on the McNay grounds. Almost 30 years later circumstances forced the Art League’s classes to move, this time to the Belgian Pavilion at HemisFair Plaza. After a brief stay, the Art League relocated to the Koehler Cultural Center. The Otto Koehler's had given their mansion to San Antonio Community College, and Mrs. Koehler requested that the College allow the Art League to office there. But when an historic property in the King William District, among San Antonio’s distinguished historic neighborhoods, came on the market, the Art League found its permanent home and a place that could adequately house and exhibit its permanent collection, as well as mount juried and other specialized vetted exhibitions.

The Art League’s minutes, archived since 1912, provide a wealth of information about its growth and activities over the years and concrete evidence of the energy and dedication of the many people who have contributed to its longevity. An entry in 1943 recounts the Annual Past Presidents Meeting:

Mrs. Stauffer, president, opened the meeting and introduced Miss Ruth Coit. Miss Coit officially presented and unveiled the Charles Umlauf statue “Christ and the Little Children” which was a gift to [the Art League at] the Witte Museum from Mrs. Marion Koogler McNay, and Mrs. Walter Nolte.… Mrs. Frank Wolff, 1^st vice-president, announced the exhibition… “Men in the Service,” a national exhibition of the works of men in the armed forces. … After breakfast…Don Goodall spoke briefly about the life and work of Charles Umlauf.

In 1950, Amy Freeman Lee, a leading cultural force in San Antonio, is recorded lobbying the Art League to provide a cash prize to the Texas Water Color Society, which was considering making San Antonio its home. Mrs. Weincek, publicity chairman, reported a total of 247 press releases during the previous year. The Kodachrome slides of important artworks that the Art League had amassed over the years was officially designated the Achning Library of Visual Education, “honoring our retiring President, under whose leadership so much educational achievement has been shown by the Art League in the years of her administration.” Eleanor Onderdonk received formal recognition as a curator “whose vast knowledge and good taste in the field of the fine arts, whose enthusiasm and tireless efforts have made the Art League a vital force for many years.”

The people whose dedication has nurtured and preserved the Art League since 1912 have been many — only a handful mentioned here. To list them all would take pages and many recognitions of gratitude. In 2004, the Art League officially changed its name to the San Antonio Art League & Museum to more accurately reflect its mission both to foster and exhibit Texas art and artists and to care for and exhibit its important collection of Texas art.

The Art League’s Annual Juried Exhibition continues the tradition of the Davis purchase prizes, awarding selected artworks donated cash prizes and accessioning Julian Onderdonk Award selections into the permanent collection. In addition, each year an artist is selected by committee for a one-person exhibition, the Artist of the Year, from which the artist selects a piece to contribute to the permanent collection. Thus the San Antonio Art League & Museum’s collection is an organic, emerging artistic resource, not only for the people of San Antonio, but for all who happen upon this remarkable cultural and artistic repository.

The Art League remains an entirely volunteer organization with a dedicated board that brings their many talents to the preservation and growth of the organization, its exhibitions, and its collection.

The mission of the San Antonio Art League and Museum is to maintain an art museum in order to preserve, collect, and exhibit local and regional art, and to promote art by means of exhibitions, lectures and other related activities. The museum shall be open to the public.

The San Antonio Art League and Museum looks forward to attracting new artists and greater public awareness and participation. To help artists and the public bridge the gap to challenges of the new millennium, the museum is devoting its energies to finding new ways of familiarizing children, students, and adults with the diversified riches of the local cultural heritage.

With the aid of corporate and private sponsorship the museum should be able to realize the following goals within this century:

Special Programs and events for SAAL&M Members (VIP visitors, field trips, lectures, workshops etc.) are organized by committee each year. Click here for more information.

Patron	Corporate/Business ($1,000.00 or More)
Patron	Individual ($500.00 or More)
Sustaining	Corporate/Business ($500.00 or More)
Sustaining	Individual ($250.00 or More)
Supporting	Corporate/Business ($250.00 or More)
Supporting	Individual ($100.00 or More)
Couple	($50.00
Individual	($35.00)
Student	($15.00)