The Santa Barbara Museum of Art features author Geoff Dyer and ‘The Last Days of Roger Federer’ at the next Parallel Stories at5:30 p.m. Thursday May 26 at SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium, 1130 State St., Santa Barbara.
In his latest book, the idiosyncratic and indefatigable Geoff Dyer turns his well-honed wit and sharp-edged wisdom to the consideration of endings.
SBMA Art Matters lecture explores “The Multiple Surrealisms of Wifredo Lam” with Mey-Yen Moriuchi, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Art History La Salle University, at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, June 2.
Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s Art Matters Lecture Explores Olfactory Ecologies and Contemporary Art with Hsuan L. Hsu, Professor of English, University of California Davis at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, July 7 at SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium, 1130 State St.
Santa Barbara Museum of Art to present Free Lecture by Acclaimed Photographer Janna Ireland — “The 2022 Lorna Spencer Hedges Photography Lecture,” at 2 p.m. Saturday, July 9 at SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium, 1130 State St., Santa Barbara.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present its Arts Matters Lecture “Joan Miró in Time and Space” by Charles Palermo, Professor of Art History at The College of William and Mary at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 4 at SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium, 1130 State St., Santa Barbara.
This lecture reviews works—paintings, objects, sculptures—by the great Catalan artist Joan Miró. Charles Palermo offers readings of works in the hope of showing how Miró implies movement and scale in his works. The result is fictional worlds with their own sense of time and place, which nevertheless stand right before us.
Visit SBMA for Third Thursday celebrating the newly-installed iconic portrait bust by artist Awol Erizku, Nefertiti – Miles Davis (Gold), now on view over the Visitor Services desk at the State Street entrance and featuring the following free activities and offerings:
Free Museum admission, 5 – 8 pm
Music by DJ Darla Bea on the Front Terrace, 5 – 7:30 pm
Complimentary docent Ten Talks for Going Global: Abstract Art at Mid-Century at 6 and 6:30 pm
Teaching Artist-led art activities in the Family Resource Center, 5 – 7 pm
Free raffle entry for a chance to win a gift bag of artful treasures from the Museum Store
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present Activating the Spectator by Reshaping the Aesthetic Field: Op, Kinetic, and Participatory Art at Mid-Century at 3 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 31 at SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium, 1130 State St., Santa Barbara.
Art historian Alexander Alberro explores the development of a research-based artistic practice that fused abstract art with mathematics, science, and technology in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The stated goal of the artists involved was to demystify the creative process in favor of an objective investigation of visual phenomena. Alberro addresses how and why these experiments evolved into a greater concern with the participation of art spectators.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s Art Matters Lecture explores Julius Caesar as the Second Founder of Rome from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 1 at SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium, 1130 State St., Santa Barbara.
Art Matters Lecture features Chris Hallett, Ph.D., Professor of Roman Art with the Department of History of Art, UC Berkeley
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art to present “Going Global: Abstract Art at Mid-Century” through Sept. 25.
Like the US dollar, air travel, and space satellites, abstract art encircled the globe or at least the capitalist West during the middle of the 20th century.
This exhibition shows just how far abstraction reached and some of the forms it took during the Cold War, when glossy color magazines and proliferating fairs brought a globalized art world into being. Going Global has artists born in Argentina, Colombia, Germany, France, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Nearly all the works come from the Museum’s permanent collection.
Artists in the exhibition include Yaacov Agam, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Eduardo MacEntyre, Ernst Nay, Kenzo Okada, Jesús Rafael Soto, Pierre Soulages, Fernando de Szyszlo Valdelomar, Bridget Riley, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, and Kansuke Yamamoto.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present Aeolus Quartet Chamber Music Concert at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 17.
Formed in 2008, the Aeolus Quartet has performed in venues ranging from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Lincoln Center’s Great Performers Series to Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, to Dupont Underground, a subterranean streetcar station in DC’s Dupont Circle. They were the 2013-2015 Graduate Resident String Quartet at the Juilliard School and are currently Quartet-in-Residence at Musica Viva, NY. In addition to extensive touring throughout the United States, the 2021-22 season includes a Morgan Library performance as well as a feature on the Violin Channel.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present its Free “Day of the Dead” Free Family Day from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 23 at 1130 State St., Santa Barbara.
For the 33rd year, the Museum honors the Mexican tradition of remembering the dead with a display of altars created by students in the Museum’s school and outreach programs and local community groups, including San Marcos High School, Montecito Union School, Quilt Project Gold Coast, SBMA’s Partnership with A-OK After-School Program (multiple schools), and SBMA’s ArtReach program (multiple schools).
Santa Barbara Museum of Art to present Art Matters Lecture “What Might Have Been: The Promise of Thomas Cole’s Late Career” at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 3 at 1130 State St., Santa Barbara.
The Art Matters Lecture features Franklin Kelly, Senior Curator and Christiane Ellis Valone Curator of American Paintings, National Gallery of Art.
Award-winning author Susan Straight and “Mecca” are featured during the next SBMA Parallel Stories at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 17 at SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium, 1130 State St., Santa Barbara.
The New York Times award-winning author Susan Straight returns to read from her latest and much lauded novel, Mecca. Set in Southern California’s inland and high desert area, this is a story of freeways, wildfires, secrets, and struggles that is, at its heart, a love song for a place and its people.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art to present Grammy Award-winning Parker Quartet at 7:30 Monday, Nov. 21 at SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium, 1130 State St., Santa Barbara.
Inspiring performances, luminous sound, and exceptional musicianship are the hallmarks of the Grammy Award-winning Parker Quartet.
Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s Art Matters Lecture looks at Impressionism and Climate Change with Harmon Siegel, Ph.D., Junior Fellow, Harvard Society of Fellows at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 1 at SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium, 1130 State St., Santa Barbara.
Impressionism has, from the beginning, been seen as an art of nature. Today, however, in the moment we call the Anthropocene, when human projects have transformed every corner of the planet and threaten to make it uninhabitable, this commitment may seem hopelessly naive. In fact, however, impressionist paintings illuminate our condition, revealing the entanglement of nature and society. In so doing, they help us overcome nostalgia for a lost nature and recognize our responsibility for shaping the world we inhabit.
Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present: Art and Shutdown’ talk with NY-baed art critic Lauren O’Neill-Butler (via Zoom).
Lauren O’Neill-Butler, a New York art critic, reflects on the highs, lows, and lessons learned while writing art criticism during the lockdown in 2020. She is an independent writer, editor, educator, and a cofounder of November magazine, and her writing has appeared in publications ranging fromArt Journal to The New York Times. From 2008 to 2019, she worked as an editor at Artforum. In 2020, she received a Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grant and a book of her collected interviews with women-identified artists
will be published by KARMA in 2021.
SANTA BARBARA — Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present: Lecture (via Zoom) “The 500 Faces of Teotihuacan.” Matthew Robb Chief Curator, Fowler Museum From 100 BCE to 600 CE, the ancient Mexican city of Teotihuacan dominated Mesoamerica though a complex mixture of religious,…
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present FREE “Art Matters Lecture (via Zoom) ‘Expert Hands, Infectious Touch: Painting and Pregnancy in Morisot’s The Mother and Sister of the Artist” with Mary Hunter, Associate Professor, Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University at 3 p.m. Thursday, March 4.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present “What You Become in Flight: A Conversation with Ellen O’Connell Whittet (via Zoom)” at 5 p.m. Tuesday, March 16.
In this searingly raw and graceful first book, author Ellen O’Connell Whittet explores both the joy of learning to jump and the safety of landing. Sorrow, violence, love, fear, hunger, and pain run through this memoir that critics have called “enthralling,” “poignant,” and “exquisite.” Join the author for a conversation that opens out the personal to the universal questions of self-worth, the desire to disappear, the loss and reclamation of our own voice, and what it feels like to look at a body and see a story.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present “The Art of Agnes Martin: Between the Lines of the Catalogue Raisonné Art Matters Lecture (via Zoom)” with Tiffany Bell, Independent Scholar, NY at 3 p.m. Thursday, April 1.
“Three Perspectives on Contemporary Painting:
A Conversation with Suzanne Hudson, Math Bass, and Christina Quarles (via Zoom)” will be presented from 5 to 6 p.m. Friday, April 30 by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, sponsored in part by The Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara.
In her forthcoming book Contemporary Painting (Thames and Hudson, April 2021), Los Angeles-based art historian and critic Suzanne Hudson considers painting as a vibrant and sometimes contentious critic of a dynamic global society. Two esteemed painters, Math Bass and Christina Quarles, who are discussed in Hudson’s book, join the author in a conversation about painting. This event is moderated by curators from the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara.
With each of her performances, the Philadelphia-born contralto Marian Anderson (1897–1993) tested limits and broke boundaries. She is best remembered for her gripping recital on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday in April 1939, when some 75,000 people gathered to witness her sing. On account of her race, Anderson had been prohibited from performing at the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Constitution Hall and other venues in Washington, D.C. The concert on the National Mall, therefore, became a watershed moment in the struggle against segregationist policies and discrimination.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present “Terms of Endearment: Social Parameters of Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s American Success” as part of its Art Matters Lecture (via Zoom) at 3 p.m. Thursday, July 1
Featuring Bert Winther-Tamaki, Professor of Visual Studies, UC Irvine
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present its Arts Matters Lecture via Zoom) Restoration/Revelation: The Conservation Treatment of the “Ghent Altarpiece” with Bart J.C. Devolder, Chief Conservator, Princeton University Museum of Art at 3 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 5.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present the Art Matters Lecture (via Zoom) “Ashes to Dust: American Art and the Dreadful Thirties” with Justin Wolff, Professor of Art History, University of Maine at 3 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 2 at 1130 State St., Santa Barbara.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present “Talk To Me: T.C. Boyle” Virtual experience via Zoom at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 12.
Bestselling author and Santa Barbara’s own idiosyncratic muse, T.C. Boyle returns to celebrate the Museum’s grand reopening and read from his lively and thought-provoking new novel Talk To Me. With an intoxicating mix of humor and profundity, Boyle explores a world where people can really talk to animals as he turns to the questions few of us admit to wondering about. What does it mean to be human? Is fully communicating with another being possible? Can one fully know a person or animal?
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present “Enigmatic Architecture: R. M. Schindler’s Los Angeles” at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 7 at SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium, 1130 State St.
The event its an Art Matters Lecture with Todd Cronan, Associate Professor of Art History, Emory University.
Grammy Award-winning musician and composer Ted Nash will lead a group of Santa Barbara City College musicians in a concert of original music on the front terrace of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Oct. 9 at 2:30 p.m. The pieces are all inspired by or are musical interpretations of works of art from the museum’s collection.
The concert, “Ted Nash: The Sound of Art,” will share the creative accomplishments made by the SBCC New World Jazz Ensemble during a workshop held in September. As part of his two-week stay as a Santa Barbara Museum of Art Artist in Residence, Nash led the group through a unique composition process using works of art as inspirations for new musical compositions.
In a conversation and reading, Emily Rapp Black, award-winning author of Poster Child: A Memoir and The Still Point of the Turning World, a New York Times bestseller, explores art and disability in her most recent book Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg. With elegance, tenderness, and zero sentimentality, she deconstructs the mythologies of words like bravery and resilience and recognizes in Kahlo a twin at the art of creating to silence pain. Joining her is colleague Alex Espinoza, Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at UC Riverside and author of novels Still Water Saints and The Five Acts of Diego Léon, and the recent nonfiction bookCruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present the Curator-led Walkthrough of SBMA exhibition “In the Meanwhile” at 2 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 20.
Exhibition curator and ArtCenter College of Design Senior Curator Julie Joyce focuses on the multiplicity of histories and stories to be captured in works by Nigel Cooke, Noah Davis, Vernon Fisher, Charles Garabedian, Tom Knechtel, Jeni Spota, and others.
For the 32nd year, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art honors the Mexican tradition of remembering the dead with a display of altars created by students in SBMA’s outreach programs and community groups. Día de los Muertos inspired art activities for all ages will be offered on the Front Terrace. Community altars also on display on Saturday, October 23 (with Museum admission).
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present reading and book signing by Author Mary Tonetti Dorra’s “Two Lives on Four Continents: A Double Memoir” at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 2.
During this intimate reading and book signing, author Mary Tonetti Dorra shares her personal experience and gives a reading from her upcoming book Two Lives on Four Continents: A Double Memoir. This work tells the story of how Mary and her husband Henri Dorra, two people from different worlds, found each other and created a unified life. Against the sweeping history of the 20th century, readers will travel from Alexandria, Egypt to Washington DC, and from Fort Worth Texas to Central and South America and Italy as they follow the exciting lives of Mary and Henri Dorra.
Santa Barbara Museum of Art to present “Keith Haring in 3-D: Graffiti and Beyond” Art Matters Lecture (via Zoom) with Lowery Stokes Sims, independent curator and cultural analyst.
Santa Barbara Museum of Art to present ‘Community-based Practice in Cultural Heritage Conservation: The Kamehameha I Sculpture of Hawai’i’ from 1 to 2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 6.
In this presentation, Dr. Glen Wharton discusses his three-year collaboration with residents in a semi-rural Hawaiian community to research the material and social history of the Kamehameha I sculpture on the Big Island, leading to a community decision about whether to gold leaf or paint it.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art to present “Power and Metals: Regalia of the Moche of Ancient Perú” — Art Matters Lecture with Alicia Boswell, Assistant Professor, History of Art and Architecture, UCSB at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 2 at the Mary Craig Auditorium, 1130 State St., Santa Barbara.
1130 State Street, Santa Barbara, CA. Open Tuesday-Sunday 11 am – 5 pm, Free Thursday Evening 5 – 8 pm 805.963.4364 www.sbma.net Enjoy half-price admission! Exhibition Openings Nathlie Provosty, Council, Untitled (16-38), 2016. Watercolor on paper, diptych.…
Put on your party hat (or make your own!) during the Museum’s 10th Birthday Bash on Saturday, February 1, 2020. MORE INFO / PURCHASE TICKETS Weave together Valentine’s Day gifts and collaborate on a community artwork during Free Family Day…
SANTA BARBARA — The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present FREE “Studio Sunday” from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 12 at 1130 State St., Santa Barbara. Visitors of all ages are welcome to participate in this hands-on workshop with SBMA Teaching Artists in…
SANTA BARBARA — The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present the “Armchair Travel Lecture: Victoria Lautman — Subterranean Ghosts: The Vanishing Stepwells of India” 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 12 at 1130 State St., Santa Barbara. India’s palaces, forts, temples, and tombs are on every…
Courtesy photo SANTA BARBARA — Santa Barbara Museum of Art to present: “Writing in the Galleries,” 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 16, 1130 State St., Santa Barbara. Writers of all levels are invited to participate in this informal exploration of the Museum’s galleries as…
