1130 State Street, Santa Barbara, CA. Open Tuesday-Sunday 11 am – 5 pm, Free Thursday Evening 5 – 8 pm
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Enjoy half-price admission!
Exhibition Openings
Nathlie Provosty, Council, Untitled (16-38), 2016. Watercolor on paper, diptych. SBMA, Museum purchase with funds provided by The Basil Alkazzi Acquisition Fund. Image courtesy of Nathalie Karg Gallery. © Nathlie Provosty.
In the Meanwhile…Recent Acquisitions of Contemporary Art
March 22 – July 5, 2020: Works on Paper (Part 1)
May 3 – August 30, 2020: Painting & Sculpture (Part II)
This two-part exhibition highlights recent acquisitions to SBMA’s permanent collection of contemporary art. Featuring over 40 artworks in a variety of media, including painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, and sculpture, the majority of the objects are on view at SBMA for the first time. These include painted works on paper by emerging artists acquired through the recently established Basil Alkazzi Acquisition Fund, as well as significant pieces by internationally recognized artists such as Sterling Ruby, Andrea Bowers, and Nigel Cooke. Tying these artworks together is a distinct sense of individuality, innovative use of materials, and playful ambiguity between traditional artistic genres.
The exhibition is comprised of works from artists in various stages of their careers, ranging from the emerging to the well-established. Artists include Scott Anderson, Edgar Arceneaux, Elizabeth Bonaventura, Andrea Bowers, Bruce Conner, Nigel Cooke, Noah Davis, Wim Delvoye, Jacci Den Hartog, Daniel Douke, Jim Drain, Vernon Fisher, Helen Frankenthaler, Peter Halley, Frederick Hamersley, Zach Harris, Naotaka Hiro, Mustafa Hulusi, Nathan Huff, Jim Isermann, Raffi Kalenderian, Tom Knechtel, Emma Kohlmann, Hew Locke, Eamon Ore-Giron, Carl Ostendarp, Cheryl Pope, Nathlie Provosty, Sterling Ruby, Jeni Spota C., Donald Sultan, Robert Therrien, Stephanie Washburn, and Jane Wilbraham.
William Merritt Chase, Children on the Beach, 1894. Oil on board. SBMA, Bequest of Margaret Mallory.
Small-Format American Paintings from the Permanent Collection
March 22 – October 25, 2020
The Preston Morton Collection, which forms the core of American art at SBMA, was gifted in 1961 upon the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Museum’s founding. In so doing, Preston Morton ensured that SBMA could boast one of the most comprehensive overviews of American art from the 18th to the mid-20th century among mid-sized institutions. The timing of the gift was significant, representing a corrective to the European bias of midcentury canonical modernism and a proud reassertion of home-grown American art.
This selection of small format paintings is a reminder of the breadth of the Museum’s holdings in this area. Oil and brush conjure the illusion of near and far persuasively, from the close perspective of still life, to the life-size proportions of bust portraiture, to sublime expanses of land and sky. Whether within hand’s reach or at an immeasurable distance, both types of visual experience are captured within the confines of a canvas no more than 15 inches in diameter. Artists represented include William Merritt Chase, Frederic Edwin Church, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Thomas Eakins, Walter Gay, George Inness, George Luks, Jervis McEntee, John Frederick Peto, Levi Wells Prentice, Edward Henry Potthast.
Exhibitions On View
Tatsuo Miyajima, Time Waterfall-panel #12, 2018. Computer graphics, LED display. Installation view at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, December 22, 2019 – April 19, 2020.
Tatsuo Miyajima
December 22, 2019 – April 19, 2020
The first solo U.S. museum exhibition of Japanese artist Tatsuo Miyajima’s art in over two decades, this captivating immersive presentation of four light-based works embodies this internationally renowned artist’s career-long philosophy: Keep Changing, Connect with Everything, Continue Forever. Reflecting millennia-old precepts found in his Buddhist practice, Miyajima ingeniously creates silent, vividly glowing objects and installations from today’s industrially-produced LED numbers and computer technologies that evoke profound and infinite worlds of being, space, and time.
Kehinde Wiley, Equestrian Portrait of Prince Tommaso of Savoy-Carignan, 2015. Oil on canvas. Collection of Dennis and Jeanne Masel. Image courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles
Kehinde Wiley: Equestrian Portrait of Prince Tommaso of Savoy-Carignan
March 3, 2019 – March 22, 2020
Kehinde Wiley has become internationally recognized for his examinations of the aestheticizing of power and masculinity through the time-worn genre of portraiture. This major painting is an extension of the artist’s Rumors of Warseries, which takes the form of historic equestrian portraiture. In Wiley’s hands, this established genre expands in scale to over nine feet in each dimension, and explodes in color with a revelry of bold and bright hues. Opposed to tradition is also the fact that the sitters for these works are not the typical European nobleman in a powerful position but people the artist meets on the street, mostly from New York. Special workshops and education programs are being planned for the duration of this project. This work comes to SBMA from a generous loan as well as support from Jeanne and Dennis Masel.
Claude Monet, Villas in Bordighera, 1884. Oil on canvas. SBMA, Bequest of Katharine Dexter McCormick in memory of her husband, Stanley McCormick.
Highlights of the Permanent Collection
Ongoing
In celebration of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s 75th Anniversary in 2016, this installation highlights some of the most important works of art from SBMA’s permanent collection, as well as several of the most exciting gifts and acquisitions in the areas of modern and contemporary art, photography, and the arts of Asia.
Events
Sunday, March 1, 3 pm
Armchair Travel Lecture: Daniel Stone
The Mysterious Origins of Our Favorite Foods: The Global Travels of David Fairchild and His Team
Hear from author Daniel Stone about the true story of an American food spy who traveled the world and transformed what America eats. American supermarkets were not always as abundant and diverse as they are today. Our favorite foods came to America in the hands of food explorers who circled the world for the USDA in search of novel plants that transformed the American diet. Join their adventures to more than 50 countries with National Geographic writer Daniel Stone, author of The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats. Follow in their footsteps to Indonesia, Japan, Iraq, Egypt, Chile, and New Guinea. Let your mouth water with stories of the big and small ways food innovators and chefs are working to keep us satisfied and well-fed in the coming decades.
Mary Craig Auditorium
$5 SBMA Members/$10 Non-Members
Purchase tickets at the Museum Visitor Services desk, or online at tickets.sbma.net.
Thursdays, March 5; April 2; June 4, 5:30 – 7:30 pm
Family 1st Thursdays
Bring the whole family and enjoy 1st Thursday together in SBMA’s Family Resource Center located on the Lower Level. Museum Teaching Artists assist families in creating special exhibition-based art projects. Afterwards, enjoy galleries until 8pm.
SBMA’s Family Resource Center
Free
Thursdays, March 5; April 2; May 7, 5:30 – 6:30 pm
Pop-Up Opera
Opera Santa Barbara returns to present crowd-pleasing pop-up performances in the Museum galleries. In April, enjoy selections from Romeo and Julietand other famous opera duets. In May, Opera Santa Barbara pays tribute to their studio artists and previews next season.
Museum galleries
Free
Art Matters Lectures
Frederick Hammersley, Four awhile (detail), 1974. Oil on linen. SBMA, Museum purchase with funds provided by Mr. and Mrs. Bernard J. MacElhenny, Jr.
Thursday, March 5, 5:30 pm
Frederick Hammersley and the Art of Control
James Glisson, Curator of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art
Beginning in the late 1940s, Frederick Hammersley experimented with artworks that had a limited range of shapes and color choices often created through elaborate procedures and scripted processes. As this lecture explores, Hammersley used control as way to free himself, to open his mind to new ideas, to play. It begins by focusing on the SBMA’s Hammersley painting,Four awhile (1974), and shares insights drawn from scientific analysis and archival research. The discussion concludes by expanding the discussion to other artists from the mid-20th century who applied rules to structure their art making.
Thursday, April 2, 5:30 pm
Expert Hands, Infectious Touch: Painting and Pregnancy in Morisot’s The Mother and Sister of the Artist
Mary Hunter, Associate Professor, Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University
When Berthe Morisot asked Edouard Manet to have a look at her recently completed portrait of her mother and pregnant sister in the days before the 1870 Salon, she did not expect him to completely repaint the depiction of her mother. “[I]t isn’t possible to stop him,” she wrote in distress to her sister. “He moves from the petticoat to the bodice, from the bodice to the head, from the head to the background.” While Morisot sought Manet’s expertise, she feared that the painting’s public display would ruin her reputation as an independent artist as his heavy hand left too obvious a mark on her canvas. This lecture explores the gender politics of occupational expertise—artistic and medical—through an analysis of Morisot’s The Mother and Sister of the Artist. Firstly, it considers the significance of hands and touch in Manet’s and Morisot’s work, and secondly examines how the hands of male experts “infected” female spaces, including paintings and pregnant bodies.
Thursday, May 7, 5:30 pm
The Art of Agnes Martin: Between the Lines of the Catalogue Raisonné
Tiffany Bell, Independent Scholar, NY
The research for the catalogue raisonné, by bringing together information about Agnes Martin’s complete body of work, has made it possible to better understand the development of her early work as well as some of the stylistic shifts and thematic changes throughout her career. This presentation describes the research for the catalogue raisonné, presenting anecdotes about newly found works and interesting discoveries, as well as giving examples of observations that have influenced a new understanding of Agnes Martin’s art.
For all:
Mary Craig Auditorium
$10 SBMA Members/$15 Non-Members/Free Students
Purchase tickets at the Museum Visitor Services desk, or online at tickets.sbma.net.
Parallel Stories Lectures
Sunday, March 8, 2:30 pm
Juan Felipe Herrera: Writing Love in the Face of Disaster
Parallel Stories flings open the door to the exuberant experimental poetry of former California and U.S. Poet Laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera, in a conversation between Herrera and his longtime friend, fellow author, and colleague in the Creative Writing program at UC Riverside, Andrew Winer. Writing to create, as he says, “incredible bridges,” Herrera confounds all borders including that between the written and the spoken. The son of migrant farmers, which he says strongly shaped his work, he finds his stories in the landscape and language of California. This multiple award-winning author of over 30 books including poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, reminds us that we are the poetry makers and invites us to join him. Book signing to follow.
Thursday, April 9, 5:30 pm
Rachel Cusk: Coventry
Called by critics “one of the smartest writers alive,” Rachel Cusk returns to SBMA and Parallel Stories to read from her latest collection of nonfiction writing, Coventry. In essays that are at once freewheeling and controlled, Cusk covers topics ranging from good manners, to rat eating, to traffic, to leashes on lions, and who controls the story. This fierce and elegant collection is a fearless exercise in truth-telling; subtle, serious, and singular. Book signing to follow.
For both:
Mary Craig Auditorium
$5 SBMA Members/$10 Non-Members/$6 Senior Non-Members
Purchase tickets at the Museum Visitor Services desk, or online at tickets.sbma.net.
Sundays, March 8; April 12; May 10, 1:30 – 4:30 pm
Studio Sundays
Visitors of all ages are welcome to participate in this hands-on workshop with SBMA Teaching Artists. Each month explore a different medium, including clay, metal, ink, wood, photography, and paper, and gain inspiration from works of art in the Museum’s permanent collection or special exhibitions.
SBMA’s Family Resource Center
Free
Thursdays, March 12; April 23; May 14 5:30 – 6:30 pm
Sketching in the Galleries
All skill levels are invited to experience the tradition of sketching from original works of art. Museum Teaching Artists or special guests provide general guidance and all materials. Each program is open to 10 participants.
Free
To reserve a spot, visit tickets.sbma.net.
Thursday, March 12, 7:30 pm
Arod Quartet
Established in 2013, the Arod Quartet, based in Paris, has already captivated chamber music lovers, performing more than 80 concerts this season at such prestigious venues as the Auditorium of the Louvre in
Paris and the Verbier Festival in Switzerland. The Arod first came to international attention when they won the First Prize at the 2016 ARD International Music Competition and went on to join the BBC New Generation Artists’ roster. The quartet made its Carnegie Hall debut in April 2019. Their program includes Haydn’s Quartet in D Major, Op. 76, No. 5, Bartók’s Quartet No. 4, and Quartet in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1, “Razumovsky,” by Beethoven.
Mary Craig Auditorium
$20 Members/ $25 Non-Members
Purchase tickets at the Museum Visitor Services desk, or online at tickets.sbma.net.
Thursdays, March 19; April 16; May 21, 5:30 – 7 pm
Writing in the Galleries
Writers of all levels are invited to participate in this informal exploration of the Museum’s galleries as an impetus to writing. Each session is led by a visiting writer/facilitator who begins with a conversation and prompts, partially inspired by works on view. Participants are free to write on their own and then reconvene as a group to share and comment on each other’s work. Please bring a journal or notebook, laptop, or tablet on which to write.
Free
To reserve a spot, visit tickets.sbma.net.
Thursday, March 19, 6 – 7:30 pm
Closing Celebration: Kehinde Wiley
Join SBMA in saying farewell to Kehinde Wiley: Equestrian Portrait of Prince Tommaso of Savoy-Carignan. To celebrate the closing of the artist’s Park Projects installation, the Museum is screening the 2014 PBS documentary Kehinde Wiley: An Economy of Grace, followed by a 30-minute Q&A with Rachel Heidenry, SBMA Curatorial Assistant, Contemporary Art.
Mary Craig Auditorium
Free
Reserve tickets at the Museum Visitor Services desk, or online at tickets.sbma.net.
Thursdays, April 2 – May 28, 6 – 9 pm
Spring Adult Ceramics
Inspired by works of art in the Museum’s permanent collection and current exhibitions, students of all skill levels are able to develop and refine both sculptural and functional techniques of ceramics through hand building, throwing, surface decoration, and glazing techniques. This course features small group instruction and individual attention for beginners, while advanced students are welcome to work independently. Suitable for beginners, the classes include both small group instruction and individual attention.
Location: SBMA’s Ridley-Tree Education Center at McCormick House, 1600 Santa Barbara Street
$400 SBMA Members/$485 Non-Members
To enroll, visit register.sbma.net.
Edgar Arceneaux, Dead Man (Walking), 1997. Graphite on paper. SBMA, Gift of Jeffrey Conrad Stewart. ©Edgar Arceneaux
Thursday, April 23, 5:30 pm
Artist Talk: Edgar Arceneaux
Edgar Arceneaux is an artist working in the media of drawing, video, film, sculpture, and performance, whose works often explore connections between historical events and present-day truths. Currently part of the SBMA exhibition In the Meanwhile…Recent Acquisitions Of Contemporary Art, Arceneaux’s work has previously been on view at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Performa 15, New York; the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, among other venues. From 1999 to 2012, he was director of the Watts House Project in Los Angeles, an initiative to remodel houses around the Watts Towers. In a wide ranging and informal conversation with the audience, Arceneaux shares his thoughts about his art, current and past projects, and how we construct history and memory in a racially divided country.
Mary Craig Auditorium
Free SBMA Members/$10 Non-Members/$6 Senior Non-Members
Reserve or purchase tickets at the Museum Visitor Services desk, or online at tickets.sbma.net.