Anticipating the Whittier Art Gallery’s historic designation sent us on a research project to find out more about our gallery’s past. We had no idea that we would find more than a quaint, local story. It was amazing to discover that The Whittier Art Gallery had been built to feature exhibits of professional artists from Los Angeles to the art colony in Laguna Beach. Hundreds of newspaper clippings documents the times.

Since 2014, Evan Martinez and I have searched through thousands of pages of original newspapers at the Whittier Museum. As we located articles about the Gallery’s past, Evan photographed each article, and we used the digitized images to build a database. We added articles from microfilm and online sources. A copy stand was used to digitize fragile documents from the Gallery’s archives.

The most touch of all, was that our Gallery’s major co-founder, Mabel George Haig, was an artist and also a writer. It has been her personal writings that have been the glue that has brought all of the research together. Her writings tell us what happened “behind the scenes” of the published newspaper articles.

As a book about the gallery’s history is nearing completion, Evan and I would like to share some of the newspaper articles that have inspired our interest and research into California art history through the Post War years.

Thank you for visiting our website.

Vicki Schramm

Evan Martinez

Vicki Schramm

Evan digitizing documents with a copystand.