Enjoy half-price admission in 2018!
Exhibition Openings
Richard Dunlap, Summer Nocturne, 1977. Tar paper with lacquer and silver leaf. SBMA, Gift of Friends of the Artist.
Summer Nocturne: Works on Paper from the 1970s
June 10 – September 23, 2018
Inspired by several large drawings in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s permanent collection, this exhibition demonstrates a variety of experimental practices during the 1970s and represents images and issues relevant to contemporary art and culture. Included are works by ten artists: Robert Beauchamp, Huguette Caland, Richard Dunlap, Dane Goodman, Luchita Hurtado, Tom Marioni, Marie Schoeff, Michelle Stuart, Joan Tanner, and John M. White.
Nam June Paik, TV Clock, 1963/1989. Twenty-four fixed-image color television monitors mounted on twenty-four pedestals. SBMA, Museum purchase with funds provided by the Grace Jones Richardson Trust, Lillian and Jon B. Lovelace, Leatrice and Eli Luria and the Luria Foundation, Zora and Les Charles and the Cheeryble Foundation, Wendy and Elliot Friedman, and Lord and Lady Ridley-Tree.
Nam June Paik: “TV Clock”
May 20 – October 7, 2018
Korean-born, American artist Nam June Paik (1932–2006) blazed a trail with video art that remains influential to this day. Paik’s TV Clock, one of SBMA’s most important media art works, is on view for the first time in nearly a decade. TV Clock consists of 24 color televisions mounted upright on pedestals that are arranged in a gentle arc and displayed in a darkened space. Paik created each electronic image by manipulating the television to compress its red, green, and blue color into a single line against a black background. Called a “fixed-image television” by Paik, each TV does not involve a videotape, disc, or computer chip but an image the artist created by ingenious manipulation of electronic elements. Read in sequence, each static line tumbles into the next to form a dynamic yet elegantly spare rhythm that resembles a universally recognized way to measure time. A crucial work in Paik’s long career, TV Clock offers audiences the chance to experience the art and thought of one of the 20th century’s most innovative and enduringly vital artists.
Exhibitions On View
Kunisada, Japanese, Act X: Disguised R?nin Testing the Loyalty of Merchant Gihei, from a Ch?shingura series, first issued 1830s. Color woodblock print, triptych. SBMA, Gift of F. Bailey Vanderhoef, Jr.
The Loyal League: Images from Japan’s Enduring Tale of Samurai Honor and Revenge
April 1 – June 24, 2018
The Loyal League of 47 samurai, commonly known in Japan as Ch?shingura (literally The Treasury of Loyal Retainers), is the most celebrated samurai loyalty-revenge story. The historical incident came to be represented in theatrical, literary, and visual materials. Drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection and supplemented with private loans, this exhibition examines the wide-ranging pictorial representations of the drama Ch?shingura in ukiyo (floating-world) woodblock prints, illustrated books, and paintings from the late 18th through the 19th centuries. Images range from stage-like representations to landscape prints with incidental but identifiable figures, from theatrical poses to bust-portraits, glorifying individual heroes or actors. The works in the exhibition include prints by ukiyo-e printmakers Utamaro, Toyokuni, Hokusai, Hiroshige, Kuniyoshi, and Kunisada, and paintings by Kinkoku and Nich?sai.
Pauline Auzou, Two Women Making Music, ca. 1796. Oil on Canvas. SBMA, Gift of Mrs. Hugh N. Kirkland.
Crosscurrents: The Painted Portrait in America, Britain, and France, 1750-1850
January 28 – May 27, 2018
Before the invention of photography, painted portraits were the most coveted means of commemorating important members of society. This exhibition, drawn exclusively from the permanent collection, explores the dynamic dialogue that took place over the course of around a century between American, British and French portraitists from the Colonial period through the Industrial Revolution. Despite political antipathies, whether between the Revolutionary colonialists and the British (1775–1783) or the French and the British during the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), these artists maintained open channels of communication. American artists, such as Benjamin West, Gilbert Stuart, Rembrandt Peale, and Thomas Sully traveled great distances to study abroad in Italy, often choosing to reside in London, where portraiture had gained the heights of refinement as the dominant genre of the 18th century.
Henry Collen and John Fox, Captain Augustus Richard Peers, 1841. Hand-painted salted paper print. SBMA, Museum purchase with funds provided by the Cohn Acquisition Fund.
Crosscurrents: American and European Portrait Photographs, 1840-1900
January 28 – May 27, 2018
Assembling striking works from the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s distinguished collection, this exhibition reveals how photographic portraiture blossomed in the later six decades of the 19th century. Originally intended to mimic the genre of portrait painting, by 1900 portrait photography had evolved to emphasize many unique and intriguing technical properties of the medium itself, with photographers persuasively arguing for photography’s status as an art form in its own right. Some of the most successful commercial photographers were trained in the fine arts, including Nadar, Roger Fenton, and Henry Collen. In fact, the cachet of early portrait photography stemmed largely from its ability to replicate the colorful effects, dignified poses, and lavish surroundings of painted portraits. As the decades unfolded and technical processes expanded, artists such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Steichen began to embrace a range of medium-specific possibilities, experimenting with exposure times, darkroom manipulation and even narrative allusions. Rather than constituting a freestanding genre, then, portrait photography was nourished by a constantly evolving relationship with its painted predecessor. From captivating hybrid works dating from just after the birth of photography in the late 1830s to artful Pictorialist expressions at the dawn of the 20th century, this exhibition presents a remarkable opportunity to see nearly 100 works of photographic art rarely on view, and attests to the endless fascination of the human face and form in art and in life.
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
Thursdays, May 3; June 7; July 5, 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
Thursday, May 3, 6 pm
Custom Mother’s Day Greeting Cards
Join local artist, Suemae Willhite, as she demonstrates Chinese calligraphy and flower paint brushing techniques. Take home your own custom handmade card perfect for Mother’s Day or any special occasion.
Museum Store
Free
Thursday, May 3, 6:30 – 7 pm
Quire of Voyces Short Program
The Santa Barbara Quire of Voyces returns to SBMA to perform short programs of choral music. The group was founded in 1993 to rediscover the sacred a capella choral music of the Renaissance and the modern age.
Mary Craig Auditorium
Free
Space is limited. First come, first-served
Hiroshige, Japanese, Act XI: After the Night Raid: The R?nin Withdrawing from Moronao’s Mansion, first issued 1835-40. Color woodblock print. SBMA, Gift of Frederick B. Kellam collection.
Sunday, May 6, 2:30 pm
The Actual 47 R?nin Incident: Unjust Punishment and Vengeance
Luke Roberts, Professor of Japanese History at UC Santa Barbara, puts into historical and cultural context the legendary 18th-century tale of a group of masterless samurai, or r?nin, who avenge the death of their lord. His lecture describes the actual historical event that inspired the celebrated tale, Ch?shingura, which still resonates in books, films, and popular television shows in contemporary Japan, and is represented in the current SBMA exhibition The Loyal League: Images from Japan’s Enduring Tale of Samurai Honor and Revenge.
Mary Craig Auditorium
Free
Sundays, May 13; June 10; July 8, 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
Thursday, May 17, 5:30 – 7 pm
Conversation and Book Signing with Michael Imperioli and Colin Gardner
Actor, writer, and Santa Barbara resident, Michael Imperioli, discusses his new book and first novel The Perfume Burned His Eyes with Colin Gardner, Professor of Critical Theory and Integrative Studies at UCSB. Called by Joyce Carol Oates “a vividly imagined and compelling story,” this sympathetic coming of age narrative brings together fathers, sons, Lou Reed, first love, and the strange and sometime agony of being a teenager.
Book signing to follow in Museum Store
Mary Craig Auditorium
Free
Reserve tickets at the Museum Visitor Services desk or online at tickets.sbma.net.
Thursdays, May 31; June 21, 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 in Highlights of the Permanent Collection. Museum Teaching Artists provide general guidance and all materials. Each program is open to 10 participants.
Free
To reserve a spot, call 884.6457 or email lvallejo-howard@sbma.net.
Monday – Friday, June 11 – August 17, 9 am – 3 pm
Summer Art Camps
Ages 5 –12
At Summer Art Camps, children are immersed in hands-on art making, cultural history, and creative problem solving. All camps include a visit to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
$250 SBMA Members/$300 Non-Members (each week)
Register online at www.sbma.net/kidsfamilies or contact Rachael Krieps at 884.6441 or rkrieps@sbma.net.