Southwest School of Art and Craft

A stroll along the River Walk to the northern corner of downtown will lead you into another world: a rare French-designed cloister where contemporary crafts are now being practiced. An exhibition gallery and artist studios-cum-classrooms (not open to visitors) occupy the garden-filled grounds of the first girls' school in San Antonio, established by the Ursuline order in the mid-19th century. Learn about both the school and the historic site at the Visitors Center Museum in the First Academy Building. The Ursuline Sales Gallery carries unique crafts items, most made by the school's artists. You can enjoy a nice, light lunch in the Copper Kitchen Restaurant (Mon-Fri 11:30am-2pm, closed national holidays). The adjacent Navarro Campus, built in the late 1990s, is not as architecturally interesting, but it's worth stopping there for its large contemporary art gallery -- and for the Art*O*Mat (sic), a converted vending machine selling local artists' work for $5 a pop. What a steal!

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