Program areas at Palm Springs Art Museum
Founded in 1938, Palm Springs Art Museum (psam) is the largest arts cultural institution in the coachella valley. Accredited by the american association of museums, the Museum has 28 galleries, two sculpture gardens, four classrooms, a resource center, five storage vaults, an 85-seat lecture hall, a 433-seat professional theater, a 1,000 square-foot store space, a permanent collection of 12,000+ works of Art (including painting, sculpture, photography, drawings, prints, and media works, with strengths in modern and contemporary Art), and a bistro all in a 150,000 square-foot architecturally significant building. Our satellite location, the architecture and design center, edwards harris pavilion features a 17,000 square-foot space for exhibitions and programming. We also have a satellite outdoor venue, the four-acre faye sarkowsky sculpture garden in Palm desert which is free and open 24/7. We currently offer 10 membership levels ranging from $50 to $25,000. Membership in 2023 remained steady with 3,300 members; slightly down from the previous year.in fiscal year ("fy") 2022, our visitor total was 134,557 and in fy 2023, we saw a nearly 10% increase to 147,967 visitors. Visitation has exceeded our pre-pandemic levels. In terms of revenue, fy 2022 admissions revenue was $1,107,427. It declined by 4.3% to $1,059,852 in fy 2023. Fy 2023 was only nine months due to changing our fiscal year end to june 30 from september 30.the Museum presented three major exhibitions in our main Museum in fy 2023, including one featuring digital artist petra cortright, another on the work of light and space artist philip k. smith iii, and an exhibition of 86 works donated to the permanent collection by patron and chair emerita donna macmillan. The Museum continued its outburst projects of small-format exhibitions for emerging artists and featured los angeles-based artist gabriella ruiz and four of her contemporaries as well as a winter exhibition of work by new york-based artist tajh rust. There have also been several smaller-scaled exhibitions of work drawn from the Museum's permanent collection, including presentations of glass Art, mexican drawing and painting, contemporary photography, desert landscapes, and contemporary african artists. At the architecture and design center, american framing focused on a common yet little understood building method and eso es la vida provided an overview of graphic design from mexico. The Museum continued to hold "thursday night sessions" featuring free admission from 5:00 8:00 p.m. as well as Art activities and djs in the galleries. Thursday night sessions is sponsored by the city of Palm Springs. The public programming department also built upon the family+ series of free admission and activities every third sunday of the month. Additionally, we worked with different community-based groups and organizations to welcome new audiences through special limited exhibitions, lectures, performances, and activities. The Museum also welcomed new partnerships with riverside county office of education, migrant education who brought students from across the eastern end of the coachella valley to do studio visits with our artists in residence through the outburst residency. The Museum continued to strengthen ongoing partnerships with the Palm Springs black history month committee, modernism week, and the Palm Springs international film festival. Individual lectures were presented involving exhibiting and visiting artists and curators, architects, creatives, and educators. Many of these lectures were presented as hybrid webinars for those unable to make it to Palm Springs and were later posted to the Museum's youtube channel. In 2023, the Museum again presented a museum-wide pride celebration for the lgbtq+ community and its allies, as well its annual summer film series.