About Art Saint Louis

As much as ever, the programming and community of Art Saint Louis is creative and innovative within our region and to our audiences because Art Saint Louis remains the only nonprofit visual art organization headquartered and active in downtown Saint Louis.

For thousands of neighborhood workers, residents and visitors, including hundreds of thousands of convention and event attendees each year, Art Saint Louis is the one and only place nearby where these audiences can discover and enjoy the most recent and engaging contemporary visual art being produced in our region, free and year-round.

There is no visual art space like Art Saint Louis in downtown Saint Louis. The gallery/cafe, mixed use art community space model we developed over a decade ago is a first-of-a-kind cultural outlet in Saint Louis, combining the value of a commercial art gallery with professionally juried exhibits with the extension amenities of the city's top-rated coffee shops, Catalyst Coffee Bar, including study areas, ample seating throughout the gallery space, free Wi-Fi and a rotating selection of tea, coffee and espresso from leading local and national small suppliers.

We define our community and audience in two ways:
 

• Geographic: Two concentric regions - (1) Downtown Saint Louis and (2) the surrounding area, within a 200-mile radius.

• Demographic: (1) Visual artists 18+ years old: Emerging and established, hobbyists and professional, college and university faculty, undergraduate and graduate students, and (2) the viewing public, children through seniors: Current or potential art collectors, students and enthusiasts.
   

We challenge and develop our audience by:
 

• Creating a fair, open and competitive forum for visual art exhibition. We maintain high standards of integrity by selecting new jurors for each component of our programming's blind jury process and exhibition.

• Introducing the viewing public to a wide spectrum of artistic expression, artists and creative leaders (through our unique jurors). Through a range of perspectives offered in each group exhibit, viewers are invited to appreciate diverse technical and aesthetic approaches. In this way, our gallery serves as a model for public discourse that celebrates individuality and diversity and its impacts on other individuals and community.

• Developing artists and viewer reflection within exhibition themes that are both widely interpretable and universally relevant, giving intellectual weight and cohesion to every exhibit.

• Exchange in that in order to develop, maintain and grow an artistic practice, by-and- large, artists need buyers, collectors, patrons – people and organizations who purchase their work for their own collections, homes, offices. Having original artwork in your space undeniably enhances the quality of life in that space by inspiring, setting a tone, narrative, emblem or other quality that becomes inherent to the space in large part due to the work that is displayed in it. When that work is purchased from a local artist, not only is it life-giving for the buyer, it is life-giving for that local artist and thus generative and life-giving for our community as it nurtures and makes possible a region where artists are visible, paid and recognized for their value, making St. Louis a viable place for artists to live and work.