The other day I was walking through Seattle Design Center in Georgetown with Ray Freeman, president of the Center on Contemporary Art, when we passed by this showroom.

"That's, like, the oldest art group in Seattle, and it doesn't allow women," he told me. What? "They're trying to let women in, though," he added.

• Cursive!

I tracked down the group's new president, Ted Pankowski of Woodinville, who led me to the group's web site, where I learned that its secretary is Paul Newman (not that Paul Newman; what were you thinking?). Pankowski also explained the history of the group, which recently decided it needs to figure out a way to get women involved. Pankowski is a proud member of eight or nine years and said PSG has about 150 members.

"We are 83 years old and were founded by some of the greatest painters in the country," he said. He listed Eustace Ziegler, Kenneth Callahan, and Bill Cumming as past members.

"The group had been a fraternity ever since 1932," Pankowski said.

But it began as a group both for men and women. It started in 1926 as the Seattle Art Club, Pankowski said. Then it became the Seattle Palette Club. And then, around 1930, it became men-only—until now. Pankowski isn't exactly sure why. "It wasn't prejudicial—obviously, artists love women! And we paint them as nudes all the time. There was a belief back then that women preferred to talk rather than to paint, which is not true. Mary Cassatt was a great painter, for instance. Another thing is that there was a gallery show in the early 1930s and the gallery would not accept women painters for some reason. I don't know why, and I don't even know the name of the gallery, but the women felt they would do better if they struck out on their own."

At that point, the splinter group that formed was the Women Painters of Washington—which endures.

Dilemma!

"After all these years, I think the Puget Sound Group, which is an all-males group, has moved to eliminate gender discrimination in our membership because there are so many really good women painters who are interested in the group," Pankowski said.

"We have set the stage for it and right now what we're doing is figuring out the best way to implement it. We could accept women members right off the bat and we'd be glad to do that, but we don't want to be in competition with Women Painters of Washington, with whom we have not only historic but psychological, spiritual, and emotional ties, and whom we know pretty well. So what we're trying to do is a collaborative thing that would benefit both groups as well as the art community as a whole. Women Painters has about a hundred and fifty members. They do not accept men. We have roughly the same number of members and we do not accept women. Until recently, anyway."

The Puget Sound Group has never had a venue—until now. Seattle Design Center, which in this economy has become a ghost town that once held luxury interior decorating merchandise, has provided a showroom for the group for free for six months. PSG's agreed-upon lease is up at the end of February, and the space is needed for a ceramics conference. But PSG is hoping to get back into Seattle Design Center in April.

If you want to check out the group, a dinner meeting is open to the public January 21 at 6 pm (admission is free). It will include a presentation by member artist Michael Reagan, who will talk about his "Fallen Soldiers" project.