Artworks by Judy Frisk, Arnor Bielvedt, David Sikes, Sharon Jeniye Cohen, Eve Kessler, Susan Prieto, Patricia Lee, and Steve Graziani are featured here in clockwise order starting from the upper left, and their work will be on display at the Pasadena Society of Artists’ 101st Annual Juried Exhibition.
One hundred years of annual shows, and the Pasadena Society of Artists isn’t slowing down. It’s moving downtown.
The organization — which has held a juried members’ exhibition every year since its founding in Pasadena in 1925 — opens its 101st Annual Juried Exhibition on April 1 at The Los Angeles Makery in downtown Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo district, the first show of its second century. Juror Catherine Hess, a former curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum and former chief curator of European art at the Huntington, selected 60 works from 131 submissions by 51 PSA member artists, according to the Pasadena Society of Artists. The show runs through April 30.
A public opening reception is scheduled for Saturday, April 4, from 2 to 4 p.m. Light refreshments will be available. The gallery at 260 S. Los Angeles St. is open Saturday and Sunday, 12 to 5 p.m., and Monday through Friday by appointment.
Founded in 1925 by fifteen charter members — including Benjamin C. Brown, widely described as the dean of Pasadena painters — PSA has grown to approximately 125 artists and counts itself as a member of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce. Its annual juried exhibition has run without interruption since the inaugural show at the Pasadena Art Institute at Carmelita Park, where the founding standard was set bluntly: “The standard will be high and only work of real merit will be accepted,” as reported in the Pasadena Star News on April 4, 1925.
That standard has been applied by outside jurors ever since. For the 101st show, Hess brings a scholarly eye for objects and materials developed over careers at the Getty, where she specialized in Italian furniture, ceramics, and glass, and at the Huntington, where she served as chief curator of European art and interim director of the art museum. According to Art Muse Los Angeles, where she now works as an art historian and educator, she has been a museum curator, director, and nonprofit leader for nearly 40 years.
The 60 selected works span a range of media and styles, from contemporary to traditional, according to PSA. The exhibition will also be viewable online at ISSUU.com concurrent with the gallery run and after it closes.
PSA’s 2025 centennial year included a major retrospective, “100 Years – 100 Images,” at the Pasadena Museum of History, where museum representative Jeannette Bovard described PSA in 2025 as “a strategic partner in our mission to provide exhibitions and programs that enhance public understanding of Pasadena’s artistic heritage.”
The 101st exhibition can be viewed at The Los Angeles Makery, 260 S. Los Angeles St., Los Angeles, through April 30. For information: PasadenaSocietyofArtists.org or @PasadenaSocietyofArtists.
In Pasadena in 1925, fifteen artists drew a line and called it a standard. A century later, 51 of their successors are carrying 60 works into downtown Los Angeles — still competing, still selected, still judged.
