Palos Verdes Art Center / Beverly G. Alpay Center for Arts Education inspires individuals to create, appreciate and celebrate art. Since it was founded in 1931, PVAC’s exhibition, education and outreach programs have made the visual arts available, accessible and affordable.
Palos Verdes Art Center provides an economically and ethnically diverse community with:
Free art exhibitions, featuring national, international and regionally significant artists and juried exhibitions. Related educational programming includes docent tours, lectures, essays and supplementary workshops.
The Studio School offers art classes for all ages and skill levels in drawing, painting, ceramics, textiles, design, art history, glass blowing and printmaking. Tuition is modest, and financial assistance is available.
Awards and scholarships. In its 18 years, the Beverly G. Alpay Memorial Education Fund has given over $200,000 to student artists. Art experiences for differently-abled youth and adults. Special Mornings works with students in special education classes in Los Angeles County.
School-based art education for more than 7,000 Palos Verdes Peninsula students each year through Art at Your Fingertips. Standards-based art programs for schools through artist-taught workshops, artists residencies and exhibition tours.
Attractive rental space for weddings, parties and meetings.
Opportunities to volunteer and to network with other artists.
Art At Your Fingertips: Now in its 40th year, 300 volunteer docents attend ten on-site workshops in order to deliver five, quality, standards-based art projects to 7,000 students grades DK-5 in every public and private school on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. This venerable program has developed partnerships to expand PVAC’s reach beyond the Peninsula to ethnically diverse, underserved students throughout Los Angeles County.
Special Mornings Art Program: Special Mornings began in 1981 as a program for differently-abled students and has expanded to include special needs adults at Canyon Verde Activity Center in Redondo Beach. Annually, seven Title 1 LAUSD schools participate in a five-week sequential art education program teaching the basics of art, enhancing the special needs students’ communication skills and self-esteem. Students come to the Art Center for their classes and also tour exhibitions, all of which is provided free of charge, including transportation.
Partners in Art focuses on sixth-grade students in Miraleste, Palos Verdes and Ridgecrest Intermediate Schools (Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District), bringing them to the Art Center for an exhibition tour with buses provided by Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe. An artist then goes into their classrooms to lead a project related to the exhibition. The resulting artwork is exhibited each spring during the Art Center’s annual celebration of student art.
In class, multi-week residency programs with artist-taught lessons meeting California visual arts standards, common core states standards and STEAM-inspired are available to elementary schools. Each has been successfully pioneered in the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District.