Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara is pleased to present Kota Ezawa: The Crime of Art, a series of light-boxes and video animations by Oakland, California-based artist Kota Ezawa that chronicles some of the most infamous and high profile museum heists in history. At the heart of this exhibition is a series of images paying homage to the 13 artworks—including those by Degas, Manet, Rembrandt, and Vermeer—stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990.

In the absence of the original works, viewers must rely solely on reproductions of the lost Stewart Gardner paintings. Whether printed in a textbook, projected in a lecture hall, or gathered from Google image search results, artwork reproductions are ubiquitous. In this way, Ezawa asks: what does it mean to be original? More »

Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara is pleased to present Bloom Projects: Beatriz Olabarrieta, Ask the Dust. This exhibition marks Beatriz Olabarrieta’s first institutional show in the United States. Olabarrieta will present a new commissioned installation revolving around a film work, exploring her ongoing interest in writing, drawing, and collaboration with other artists, musicians, and writers as devices to generate performative spaces or situations. The exhibition will be accompanied by a commissioned text by Bianca Stoppani. More »