Preserving Effie's Legacy
Her Timeless Desert Art needs Your Support!
by Steven Carlson, Curator
Welcome to another EFFIEgram tracing the art and life of Arizona’s earliest Impressionist desert landscape painter - Effie Anderson Smith (1869-1955).
A reminder…
Our current exhibit Desert Paradise: The Art & Life of Effie Anderson Smith at Sigler Western Museum in Wickenburg (formerly Desert Caballeros) featuring 55 of Effie’s finest canvases continues on view through February 15, 2026.
We are excited for our new exhibit Impressions of the Desert which opens January 16, 2026 in the heart of historic old Bisbee at the Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum.
And - we invite you to SUPPORT our Effie Anderson Smith Museum & Archive exhibits and search for a permanent gallery home for Effie’s art with a tax deductible donation to our Year-End Campaign. As a 501c3 nonprofit your donations are tax deductible.
Ninety years ago in the mid-1930s, while Effie was creating some of her greatest desert art masterpieces in the uncertain times of the Great Depression, this is how Effie extended her happy holiday greetings to friends…
Effie had recently become a widow for the second time in her life. She was now living mostly alone and painting in the isolation of the shrinking little mining camp at Pearce. Passenger rail service to and from Pearce had ended awhile back, and the tracks were ripped up in 1933. Effie could have withdrawn from the world as an artist and civic leader. But that was not Effie’s way. She soon became an advocate for the Congressional campaigns of her friend Isabelle Greenway. Effie had long been active in civic activities in good times and bad, including founding a local Red Cross chapter in 1917 and other social clubs. Driving around southern Arizona in her 1928 Buick, she continued to visit friends in nearby Willcox as well as local ranchers, farmers and mining folks around her section of Cochise County to raise funds or campaign for projects and causes she believed in.
Due to economic conditions in the mid-1930s Effie’s art shows and talks beyond the circuit of the Woman’s Clubs were less frequent, but she persevered through those very uncertain times. In fact, the 1930s and especially the 1940s - through the Great Depression, World War II and beyond - proved to be Effie’s most prolific and successful years as an Arizona desert artist, despite the challenging economy of the 30s and the war rationing of the early 40s. Effie kept going.
We remain inspired by Effie’s example of maintaining her artistic vision and goals through so many uncertain times.
In taking the first steps (beginning in late 2023) to create a New Art Museum dedicated to exhibiting and preserving the art and inspiring life story of Effie Anderson Smith, we do so now with the awareness that longstanding government sources of funding for the arts and art museums in the U.S. are now greatly diminished.
That said, in our first two years of operations we have presented a range of exhibit and programs to bring Effie’s art to new audiences - thanks to the support of individuals like you! And we continue our work to expand awareness of Effie’s artistic legacy through our exhibits in Arizona and beyond.
The E.A. Smith Archive’s Fall 2023 Arkansas Exhibit Tour took place in September and October with the goal to Bring Effie’s Art Home to the four towns in Arkansas where Effie was born in 1869, grew up in the 1870s and 1880s, painted her first canvases in the 1880s, and began her adult life as a school teacher in the 1890s.
As a result, Effie’s art was exhibited for the first time ever in her Arkansas birthplace and on one day alone over 700 home schooled children and their parents saw Effie’s art in our exhibit at the old 1874 Courthouse that Effie and her family visited many times during her youth at what is now Historic Washington State Park.
Washington, Arkansas - the old 1874 Hempstead County Courthouse that would have been familiar to Effie.
Soon after, our new Effie Anderson Smith Museum & Archive’s exhibits resumed in Arizona including…
Spring 2024 exhibits in Willcox, Arizona and Deming, New Mexico.
Deming Art Center - Deming, New Mexico Fall 2024 Effie Experience Weekend in Douglas at the new Studio 917 Gallery in cooperation with Douglas Historical Society and Douglas Art Association.
Spring 2025 Benson Centennial Exhibit in honor of the historic town’s 100th anniversary of incorporation and Effie’s first solo art exhibit at the Benson Woman’s Club in 1926. Benson was Effie’s first Arizona home town (1895-96).
Our 2025-26 Desert Caballeros / Sigler Western Museum Retrospective Exhibit of Effie’s art and artifacts from her life, now on view through February 15, 2026.
Visitors to our Effie Anderson Smith exhibit entitled Desert Paradise at Wickenburg’s Desert Caballeros Western Museum. 
Our Print Publications…
We’ve created a range of PRINTS suitable for framing of Effie’s art works now available to you as a Thank You Gift for your support. It’s the result of a three year preservation project to digitize Effie’s finest paintings and to make it possible so anyone can own an Effie canvas art print. As an expansion of that, we are also creating a growing library of books and PUBLICATIONS on Effie’s Life and Art.
Our ART CONSERVATION efforts continue as we discover long forgotten or neglected paintings by Effie and the historic frames she selected which are often in dire need of restoration. We can place these with skilled art conservators in San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson and beyond for careful restoration - thanks to lovers of Effie’s art - like you - who help us continue this important work to Save Effie’s Art though your tax deductible donations to the Effie Anderson Smith Museum & Archive.
Our Next Exhibit - Historic Bisbee…
Our next exhibit will be in BISBEE at the amazing Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum in the heart of that wonderfully preserved town - opening January 16, 2026.
We look forward to seeing you in Bisbee where we will present several of the most popular paintings by Effie from our museum’s Effie Anderson Smith Collection - along with three newly discovered paintings by Effie that have not been exhibited publicly since the 1940s. We are grateful to our wonderful private collector friends who have agreed to kindly loan these treasures to us for a limited time.
We invite you to help us continue to raise awareness of Effie Anderson Smith’s timeless desert art embodying the Arizona experience and bring Effie’s art to new audiences - young and old - in 2026 and beyond. Thanks again for your support!