Laguna Beach is the plein air capital of California and one of the most storied artist communities in the American West - a coastal village south of Los Angeles where the Laguna Beach Art Association, founded in 1918, gave rise to one of the most important regional art movements in California history. The Festival of Arts, held every summer since 1932, is one of the longest-running outdoor art exhibitions in the United States, and the adjacent Sawdust Art Festival draws 200 independent artists to a eucalyptus grove for an eight-week summer run that has no equivalent on the West Coast. The Laguna Art Museum, the only museum in Southern California devoted exclusively to California art, holds a permanent collection that documents the full history of Laguna Beach's extraordinary artistic legacy from the early Impressionists to the present.
Museum Village of Laguna Beach · Laguna Beach
California's only museum dedicated exclusively to California art, with a permanent collection tracing plein air painting and modernism from the 1890s to today in a stunning oceanfront village.
Gallery Village of Laguna Beach · Laguna Beach
One of Laguna Beach's most established fine art galleries, showcasing California plein air and impressionist paintings alongside contemporary representational works.
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Laguna Beach became an artists' colony before World War I, when painters discovered that its rugged coast, its ocean light, and its dramatic canyon terrain offered subject matter unlike anything else in Southern California. Norman St. Clair, Edgar Payne, William Wendt, and Anna Hills were among the early settlers whose plein air paintings established the Laguna Beach tradition, and the Laguna Art Association, founded in 1918, is one of the oldest artist-run organizations in California. The Laguna Art Museum, founded as an outgrowth of that association, presents both historical California art and contemporary exhibitions in a handsome building near the beach. The annual Festival of Arts, held each summer since 1932, is one of the country's longest-running outdoor arts festivals; its companion event, the Pageant of the Masters, in which volunteers recreate famous works of art as living tableaux, is one of the most unusual cultural events in the American West. Downtown Laguna Beach's galleries line Forest Avenue and the surrounding streets in a walkable district that serves the substantial collector community that calls the city home or visits it regularly.