Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery – Our Mission & Team

Our Mission

Where Visual Art Informs, Delights, Challenges, and Inspires

The Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery is an inclusive, approachable, and supportive visual arts space. This unique venue is a special place for students – a community where they can explore and develop their creativity, experience the power of visual arts to investigate social topics across disciplines, and see work from a wide range of professional artists. Located on the UC Santa Cruz campus and open to the campus and greater community, the gallery is a space for reflection, inspiration, and more. It presents a dynamic range of quarterly exhibitions with interdisciplinary programming, produces learning opportunities available to all UC Santa Cruz students, and houses a permanent collection of California artists’ work. Since its founding in 1966, the Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery has also evolved to:

• Promote cutting-edge art addressing contemporary issues, including climate change, diversity, and immigration
• Facilitate experiential, art-based education
• Present events that stimulate cross-disciplinary conversations on topics of pressing social issues, including climate change, diversity, and immigration
• Provide an inspirational space for students, faculty, and staff to collaborate and build community

From its beginnings, the gallery has been at the Cowell College living and learning center. Established in 1966 and named after Eloise Pickard Smith, an artist, beloved member of the campus community, and the wife of Cowell College’s founding provost, Page Smith. The gallery also houses a permanent collection featuring works by California artists and Eloise Pickard Smith among its highlights. With a history that extends to UC Santa Cruz’s pioneer classes of faculty and students, the Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery functions as a significant pillar within the intellectual life of Cowell College and represents a cornerstone in the university’s network of exhibition spaces. In the spirit of the college’s motto “The pursuit of truth in the company of friends,” the Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery celebrates the capacity of the visual arts to enliven and expand the horizons of inquiry while fostering connections not only within the college, but within the broader campus and local community. 

The Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery Collection

Visit our collection online or in person at the Cowell College Fireside Lounge, located next to the gallery space