Beaumont Art League
The Beaumont Art League (BAL) is the oldest non-profit art organization in the Beaumont, Texas, USA, area. The BAL hosts 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. 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. 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