A mission to support, encourage, and showcase the work of local artists
About Us
History
The Key West Art Center and Gallery: The home for local art and artists.
The Key West Art Center & Gallery is housed in a historic quaint wooden building in the midst of the city’s old town waterfront area. It was originally constructed in the 1890’s near the waterfront for use as a grocery store. The grocery was owned and managed by the George Babcock family for many years. In later years the building was the location of the first WPA Art Project under President Roosevelt. The WPA was created to help get Americans back to work after the Great Depression. In Key West, which had gone bankrupt in the 1930's, WPA artists helped entice tourists to the city by depicting our beautiful tropical scenery in brochures and other promotional materials.
The KWAC membership prior to 1960 had several locations, one of which was in the 400 block of Simonton St. This group of local artists was joined by several businessmen and persuaded city officials to save the historic building on Front Street which had been condemned. It was then converted into a city sponsored art center and gallery.
It was one of the first buildings to be restored in the old Mallory Square area and became the home of the Key West Art Center & Gallery in 1960.
Our Mission
The Key West Art Center & Gallery is incorporated as a non-profit organization, devoted to the encouragement of local artists by furnishing them with a central market place for their work. The Center is supported by membership dues and a commission of sales. Here you will find a wide variety of art created by over 50 dedicated local artists from the Florida Keys. Work includes paintings in many mediums, sculpture, ceramics, fine jewelry and fine craft. If you are searching for a special piece of the Keys, you will find it here.
Our mission statement: The Key West Art Center & Gallery provides a year round sales resource for local artists. It provides a community gathering place, learning environment and public exhibit space. We safeguard the heritage of Key West as a city of artists.
Martha Watson Sauer 1912-2006
Martha Watson Sauer was a uniquely talented and prolific artist who lived most of her life in Key West, but also traveled the world documenting her experiences through drawing and painting, making notes all along the way in her detailed sketchbooks. She was an early member of the Key West Art Center. A permanent exhibit about her life and work as well as the history of the Art Center is on view in our upstairs gallery. The exhibit includes examples of her watercolors and sketchbooks, as well as her block prints created for tourist brochures under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a program that emerged out of the Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA) passed by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934 to help America get back to work and prosperity in the wake of the Great Depression and hard economic times. She did the artwork for the Key West Aquarium, as well as other newly developed tourist attractions of the 1930’s, including the Ernest Hemingway House, the Peggy Mills Garden (now The Gardens Hotel) and the West Martello Tower, home of the Key West Garden Club. Martha was also employed by the WPA to teach weaving and watercolor classes at the Art Center location -- then known as the Key West Community Art Center -- the WPA’s first public art project, and the seed that eventually grew into today’s Key West Art Center & Gallery.