This talk examines exquisite engraved cameos and intaglios cut by the gem-carver of the Roman emperor Augustus and addresses the vexed problem of distinguishing ancient originals from modern forgeries.
SANTA BARBARA — The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present “Wares!” artist Anthony Sonnenberg workshop:
Saturday, September 16, 10 – 11:30 am
Pop-Up Clay Play with Anthony Sonnenberg
Location: SBMA’s Family Resource Center, 1130 State Street, Santa Barbara
Free (reservation required)
Reserve at spot at tickets.sbma.net
Join WARES! exhibition artist Anthony Sonnenberg for a casual conversation, hands-on demo, and unique opportunity to create with clay and cardboard. Pinch, roll, repurpose, twist, glue, and build cross-cultural crowns with the help of Museum Teaching Artists, and explore the power of ornamentation. Dress for mess. Ages 18 and over.
With more than 90 works, this exhibition features many of the most beautiful and accomplished drawings created by the extraordinarily gifted, self-taught artist James Castle (1899 – 1977). The Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) represents the sole venue for this show, which highlights the artist’s remarkable technical skills and attempts to foster a better understanding of his evocative and unconventional images, particularly his landscapes and architectural interior scenes. Unfortunately, the common perception of Castle and his art has tended to be very limited due to emphasis on his physical impairments—he was profoundly deaf and largely mute—and his geographic isolation, working in rural Idaho.
SANTA BARBARA — The Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s “Art Matters Lecture” explores “The Past, Future, and Present of the Clyfford Still Museum” at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 5.
The event features a lecture with Joyce Tsai, Director, Clyfford Still Museum.
SANTA BARBARA — Santa Barbara Museum of Art to present Inside Stories/Outside Tales “Inwardly Defiant: Yunte Huang and Celine Shimizu.”
Celebrated author, Guggenheim Fellow and UCSB professor Yunte Huang reads from his latest book, Daughter of the Dragon, an in-depth exploration of Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American film star who both encouraged and defied the Hollywood industry’s efforts to categorize her.
SANTA BARBARA — Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present a “Día de los Muertos” Free Family Day from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 22 at 1130 State St., Santa Barbara.
For the 34th year, the Museum honors the Mexican tradition of remembering the dead with a display of altars created by students in the Museum’s outreach programs and community groups. Día de los Muertos inspired art activities for all ages will be offered on the Front Terrace and in the Family Resource Center. New this year, end the event at 3:45 pm with a procession down State Street to the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCASB) with Latinx Indigenous immigrant community members and traditional dances and music from the Mixtec and Zapotec region of Oaxaca.
For the procession, costumed participation (Catarinas, Calaveras, and skull or skeleton and human and animal inspired designs) is encouraged.
SANTA BARBARA — The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present “Self-Portrait En La Cherry: In Conversation with Artist Narsiso Martinez” at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 24 at SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium, 1130 State St., Santa Barbara.
In conjunction with the exhibition Inside/Outside, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art is pleased to welcome back Narsiso Martinez for a public presentation. Martinez takes the produce boxes from grocery stores and paints portraits of the agricultural laborers many of whom are undocumented and subjected to terrible working conditions. These poignant images bring to the fore all the unseen labor that supports agribusiness and come from his experience as a worker in the fields up and down the West Coast.
SANTA BARBARA — Santa Barbara Museum of Art to present “Parallel Stories/Reading and Discussion with Award-Winning Author Eileen Myles” at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 28 at SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium, 1130 State St., Santa Barbara.
“A kick-ass counter-cultural icon.” —The New Yorker
SANTA BARBARA — Santa Barbara Museum of Art to present “Crossing Cultures, Crossing Artforms: Suzanne Jill Levine, Aldon Nielsen, and Jeanne Heuving” AT 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 5 at SBMA’s Ridley-Tree Education Center at McCormick House, 1600 Santa Barbara St., Santa Barbara.
Inside Stories/Outside Tales
Three writers read and discuss their works. Distinguished scholars and creative writers discuss how their work has involved them in intensive explorations of cultures and arts apart from their immediate backgrounds.
SANTA BARBARA — Santa Barbara Museum of Art to present “An Artist Talk — Whitney Bedford’s Landscapes” AT 5 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 7 at the Atkinson Gallery, Humanities Building, H-202, Santa Barbara City College, 721 Cliff Drive, Santa Barbara.
The Atkinson Gallery at Santa Barbara City College and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art have co-organized an artist’s talk with Whitney Bedford, a California artist who looks to art history, especially Impressionist painters, to make startlingly colored and brilliantly graphic images. Even though Bedford is a thoroughly contemporary artist, her work exists in a deep dialog with 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century artists.
SANTA BARBARA — The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present th Valencia Baryton Project Chamber Music Concert at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 14 at SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium, 1130 State St., Santa Barbara.
The Valencia Baryton Project was founded in Valencia, Spain with the vision of performing the nearly 160 works written by Franz Joseph Haydn as well as compositions by other composers, both modern and classical.
SANTA BARBARA — The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and NYT Bestselling Author John Densmore in conversation with Andrew Winer at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 16 at SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium, 1130 State St., Santa Barbara.
Beloved by artists across the decades for his fierce, uncompromising dedication to art, John Densmore occupies a rarified space in pop culture. His musicianship landed him in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His writing consistently earns accolades and has appeared in a range of publications including the Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone. As his friend and American novelist Tom Robbins recently advised him, “If you keep writing like this, I’ll have to get a drum set.”
William Wegman, best known for his images of Weimaraner dogs, will speak about his pioneering work in painting, drawing, photography, and video, beginning with his start in California in the 1970s. SANTA BARBARA — Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA)…
With their crisp outlines, unmodulated colors, and surprising vantage points, Japanese woodblock prints (ukiyo-e) from the 18th and 19th centuries seem as fresh and captivating today as when they were produced. Sensuality, fashion, decadent entertainments and urban pastimes all reflect the popular tastes of young sophisticates in the premodern era. Matthew Welch will provide an overview of the social milieu of Japan’s “floating world” and the artists who immortalized it through their prints. He will also discuss several contemporary artists whose works reference the ukiyo-e tradition.
In conjunction with the SBMA exhibition Inside/Outside(on view until February 18), Prof. Caroline Arruda will give a talk that combines philosophy with art to think about how artists show us what a life well lived might look like. Contemporary culture sees artists as being authentic because many pursue their creative goals above all else, sacrificing family or a stable life to realize their dreams. While few of us doggedly pursue our goals with this intensity, artists still do have something to teach the rest of us about living authentically and living well.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present Grammy Award-winner Ted Nash in free concert on SBMA’s Front Terrace from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday, July 10 at 1130 State St., Santa Barbara.
In his fourth summer as SBMA artist-in-residence,?Grammy Award-winning musician and composer Ted Nash shares insight and experience with a selection of Santa Barbara City College students and fellow musicians culminating in a free concert.
Santa Barbara Museum of Art to present Pulitzer Prize-winning Forrest Gander joining poet Patricio Ferrari at SBMA’s Parallel Stories at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 11 at SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium, 1130 State St., Santa Barbara.
Too often we hear that something is lost in translation, but who talks about what can be gained in the process, especially in relation to poetry? In an age of dwindling linguistic diversity and cultural homogenization, poetry translators build bridges across borders and between cultures, writers, and readers, introducing new syntactical strategies, rhythms, and image repertoires. Reading as translators is the deepest reading, a multi-layered engagement with sensorial experience—verbal and visual choices interwoven with the vibrancy of sound—at its core.
SBMA Art Matters features Jan Tichy on Lucia Moholy and Documentary Absurdities at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 6 at 1130 State St., Santa Barbara.
Tichy, Associate Professor, Department of Photography, Art & Technology
Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, shares his work and research on the writer and photographer Lucia Moholy and discusses the place of contemporary art within historical research and preservation.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) is pleased to welcome visitors back into the galleries on May 11, in accordance with the State of California and Santa Barbara County COVID-19 protocols.
In order to ensure social distancing in the galleries, SBMA is recommending all visitors to make reservations through the online ticketing system at tickets.sbma.net, with admission being free for the foreseeable future.
For the sixth time in consecutive years, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) has been recognized as a “Four Star Charity” by top non-profit evaluator Charity Navigator.
Achieving a Four Star rating—the organization’s highest rating— in consecutive years is also deemed as highly significant. In a letter sent to SBMA, Michael Thatcher, Charity Navigator President and CEO, writes, “Only 11% of the charities we evaluate have received at least 6 consecutive 4-star evaluations, indicating that Santa Barbara Museum of Art outperforms most other charities in America. This exceptional designation from Charity Navigator sets Santa Barbara Museum of Art apart from its peers and demonstrates to the public its trustworthiness.”
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present FREE “Parallel Stories (via Zoom) A Conversation with Claudia Rankine” at 2 p.m. Sunday, March 7.
Acclaimed author Claudia Rankine joins SBMA for a conversation “on the path to understanding.” The talk begins with a screening of selections from Situations, a series of ten short videos collaboratively produced by documentary filmmaker John Lucas and Rankine.
SANTA BARBARA — While the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) is temporarily closed due to response to COVID-19, the Museum is sharing exciting content on its website and social media accounts to continue to digitally engage the public and maintain…
SANTA BARBARA — In light of the recent developments with the COVID-19 in Santa Barbara County and in accordance with the CDC and State of California, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art has made the decision to close to the public…
SANTA BARBARA — The Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) and the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History (SBMNH) want you to Experience the Art and Science of the Cosmos! Buy an admission ticket to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art…
