Boston Art Club

Their desire was to form a democratic organization where the European tradition of independent, master-artists would be replaced with cooperation in the promotion, sale and education of art.

They elected three presidents: Joseph Alexander Ames, Walter Brackett, and Benjamin Champney.

It is said that there were twenty founding Members that also included Francis Seth Frost, Samuel W. Griggs, Edward Pressey, Frederick Dickinson Williams, and Moses Wright.

The Boston Art Club founding Members painted in the local New England area.

The first Boston Art Club exhibition was in combination with several New York colleagues, including Frederic Church, Asher Durand, and John Kensett.

This almost ended the existence of the Club, but for the help of a local thespian who put on William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and raised enough money to pay for the lost paintings.

They gained sufficient support from these exhibitions to be formally incorporated by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on March 3, 1871.

With Perkins at the helm they called a general meeting, and the suddenly revived club opened its membership to upper-class men who professed an interest in art (it remained firmly closed to women for the next six decades).

The Club added a spacious picture gallery behind the building and in 1873 opened its first annual exhibition.

It took nearly a decade to raise sufficient funds, but with over five hundred Members by 1880, eventually there was enough to launch a national contest by architects for the new Club House building.

The Club became a social outpost for the wealthy Bostonian Art Collectors like Isabella Stewart Gardner.

The embroglio involved even the Governor of Massachusetts, Alvan T. Fuller, who was a Member of the Art Club and who placed himself on the new Exhibition Committee.

With the arrival of a few new artist members, a new president, and the Internet, the Club was able to create a virtual presence on the web.