South Wing Galleries

California Art Club’s 113th Annual Gold Medal Exhibition

August 20, 2024 – October 26, 2024

Curated by California Art Club

One of the oldest, largest, and most active professional arts organizations in the world, the California Art Club is dedicated to the advancement and appreciation of artwork created using time-honored techniques in the fields of painting, drawing and sculpture.

Founded in 1909 in the studio of Franz A. Bischoff (1864–1929) along the banks of the Arroyo Seco in Pasadena, Club’s illustrious founding members also included Carl Oscar Borg (1879–1947), Hanson Puthuff (1875–1972), Jack Wilkinson Smith (1873–1949), and William Wendt (1865–1946), whose wife, Julia Bracken Wendt (1871–1941), was a celebrated sculptor.

The Annual Gold Medal Exhibition pays tribute to its pioneering artists who inspired California Impressionism – the first artistic movement defined as purely Californian. The highly-anticipated display has gained the reputation as the most vital platform for demonstrating the best of the realist genre – from pristine landscapes and grittier urban scenes to novel still lifes and evocative figurative paintings and sculptures – all being exhibited for the first time.

The exhibition has a long history having no theme to encourage artists to take artistic risks and create what they consider to be their most important works. As a result, Gold Medal artists use classical methods to express vital modern messages, ranging from environmental preservation to social issues and attitudes.

With the 113th installment of this storied exhibition on view at the Hilbert, visitors are offered a rare opportunity to view the most exceptional representational works being created today by current Club artists, as well as significant artwork of historic CAC artists in the museum’s permanent collection. This year’s show features nearly 180 works by 163 artists.