The Agnes Pelton Society hosts the inaugural Pelton House Museum Day at the historic Agnes Pelton house in Cathedral City from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Feb. 24.
Pelton House Museum Day is an open-house event to celebrate the history and legacy of American modernist painter, Agnes Lawrence Pelton, her paintings, and the paintings of the former artist colonists, who also lived and made art in the Cathedral Cove neighborhood. Docent-led tours will showcase original works in the modest private galleries, and guests are invited to walk through the house’s sculpture and meditation gardens, and view the murals on the walls of the adjacent Chuperosa Lane, where local artists have been commissioned to paint murals commemorating the history of the neighborhood.
Pelton is the posthumously celebrated Cathedral City artist and leader of the Transcendental Painters Group. She designed and built her home in the Cathedral City Cove in 1939, where she lived and painted her illustrious masterworks. After her passing in 1961, her work was virtually forgotten, as well as the rich history of the artists colony that flourished there from the 1930s to 1960s.
In the last few decades, her paintings have been rediscovered by the art world and in March, a two-year retrospective of her abstract paintings, “Agnes Pelton, Desert Transcendentalist,” will tour the Phoenix Museum of Art, Santa Fe Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, and culminates at the Palm Springs Art Museum in the summer of 2020.
In 2010, artists Peter Palladino and Simeon Den purchased Pelton’s home and have been in the ongoing process of renovating and re-imagining the storied property and restoring its forgotten history. In their previous efforts to honor Pelton’s legacy, they organized the annual Cathedral City Cove open house, tour of historic and artists homes, that showcased several other historic nearby homes, as well as the home studios of current working artists
The interior of Agnes Pelton’s main painting studio and now intimate gallery showcasing her original work and collections of paintings by the artists who lived and worked in the Cathedral Cove artists colony.
The mini-arts festival, open house includes live classical music and dance in the open-air gardens; traditional Mexican folklorico entertainment, live painting, art installations in the Chuperosa Lane murals path; and the unveiling of the Gaudi-esque mosaic murals by Palladino on the walls of the house and pool.
Parking is available in the neighborhood streets and at the free Cathedral City parking lot located adjacent to the St. Louis Catholic Church at C Street and West Buddy Rogers Avenue, directly across from Cathedral City City Hall.
Pelton House Museum Day, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Feb. 24, 68680 F St., Cathedal City. Tickets are $15 at the door and in-advance at the website, agnespeltonsociety.com.
Previously unseen mosaic art that decorates the grounds of the Agnes Pelton house.