In 1909, a small group of art students formed an organization to unite area artists and create more exhibition opportunities.

They called their group the Columbus Art Student League.

Through the years, the organization's name changed, and today it's known as the Columbus Art League.

Some former members have achieved distinguished careers.

One of our founding members in 1909 was Alice Schille, who is a Columbus-based artist whose reputation has been growing in the past couple of years.

She was active as a painter through about the 1950s.

Other notable members have included artist George Bellows, Sidney Shaffetz, and Roy Lichtenstein.

Today, the Columbus Art League's office is located in the first office center building.

Our slide registry, which we have in the office, which allows people from the community or curators or people who are interested in maybe having a commissioned portrait done or something, come into the office and view the work of over 100 Central Ohio artists in one location.

I can provide them with information on opportunities for exhibition and commissioning and marketing that are sponsored by other organizations that inform us that they are doing this, and then we therefore can inform a large population of artists that these opportunities exist.

I can help them keep up to date on issues and current activities in the arts community here in Columbus through our two publications, Columbus Art and our monthly newsletter.

We also published Columbus Art, which is a, and have for the last 10 years.

It has its 10th birthday this year.

And that's a very important part of what we do as well because it's a dialog on the arts, visual arts primarily in the Columbus area.

And there's a need for that kind of dialog, that criticism and so on.

The Art League still concentrates on providing exhibition opportunities for area artists.

Outreach is by providing those exhibitions and getting a lot of people involved in seeing what's going on.

We have widened the scope of that in the last few years by providing more exhibitions.

We have a couple of exhibitions at the Cultural Arts Center in Ford-Hays Our exhibition program consists of two major juried exhibitions each year, one being the spring exhibition at the Columbus Museum of Art that's presented in conjunction with the museum, and the other being the fall juried exhibition, which is presented in with the Upper Arlington Cultural Arts Commission.

We have exhibitions at our office on a bimonthly basis, and they're called six for two, six exhibitions a year for two months each.

We developed an invited committee that selects the work for each one of those exhibitions.

Five years ago there were around 300 members of the Art League, now there are 500 and we seem to have a growing interest in membership, a growing interests in programs.

We are beginning to be seen by the Columbus community as a resource for information on the arts.

We get calls in the office from anything from Son of Heaven to... Where can I send my five-year-old for art enrichment classes?

And we do try to answer all those questions and develop resources so that we can.

With a name like the Columbus Art League, people just normally, naturally, call us up and ask us questions about art.

And I think that's a service we can and do provide to the community.

And it's great to be able to do that.

It's fun to answer those questions.