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Frank Bette Center For the Arts

1601 Paru St, Alameda, CA 94501
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Frank Bette Center for the Arts is a small community art hub in a quiet Alameda neighborhood near Lincoln Avenue, a few blocks from the busier Park Street corridor. The space is set up as a house-turned-gallery, so visitors can expect a mix of gallery rooms and smaller nooks used for exhibits, meetings, and classes. Regular visitors get used to finding a mix of framed work on the walls, tables with event materials, and signs pointing to current shows or workshops rather than a polished museum layout.

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On most visit days it functions as a volunteer-staffed gallery with changing exhibitions, including the annual Alameda On Camera show that runs for several weeks in the spring. The Center also hosts the Frank Bette Plein Air Paintout, which brings outdoor painters to work around the island and then show the results back at the venue. Weekly Monday Night Life Drawing is a staple, set up as an open studio session with a live model and a quiet, work-focused vibe instead of a formal class. Other times the same rooms are used for small-group classes in painting, drawing, cartooning, and similar hands-on activities, along with poetry readings, writer meetups, and other low-key gatherings.

The Center operates as a nonprofit, volunteer-run organization established in 2002 in a yellow Victorian house that long served as artist Frank Bette’s home and workshop. After his death the building was left to be used for art-related gatherings and community events, and the current schedule of exhibits, classes, and creative meetups is built around that original idea.

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Frank Bette Center For the Arts

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Monday, July 27

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