SBMA Ticketing

Tuesday - Sunday from 11 am - 5 pm.

General Admission entry into SBMA.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member: FREE
Adult: $5
Senior (age 65+): $3
Child (ages 6-17): $3
Under 6: FREE

Sunday, January 20, 2019
2:30 pm - 4:00 pm

In conjunction with the exhibition, Paths of Gold:  Japanese Landscape and Narrative Paintings from the Collection, this lecture will explore the theme of “famous places” in Japanese art, highlighting important landmarks, as well as flora and fauna scenes that were featured on Japanese folding screens. Nobles, samurai, and wealthy merchants often commissioned images of “famous places” and seasonal motifs for special occasions, private home use or public displays. Goodall’s talk will consider not only the physical beauty of the subject, but also the hidden stimuli behind their creation.

Hollis Goodall is the co-curator of the Paths of Gold exhibition with Susan Tai, Elizabeth Atkins Curator of Asian Art.

This event is sponsored by

Ticket Cost:
General Admission: FREE

Sunday, January 27, 2019
2:30 pm - 4:00 pm

Inspired by the site-specific installation by Los Angeles-based artist April Street, The Mariners' Grand Staircase (Armoured Stars, Flying Clouds), currently installed in the Museum's Park Lobby, this conversation between artist Tony de los Reyes and writer Sameer Pandya explores the symbolic potential of the sea. As Herman Melville wrote, why did some "...hold the sea holy?" Why, like Narcissus, do we see ourselves in rivers and oceans? Why, with its associations of unpredictability, infinity, the beginnings of life, turbulent passions, unfettered freedom, purification, solitude and rebellion, does water seduce us, console us, and alarm us?

Parallel Stories is a literary and performing arts series that pairs art and artists with award-winning authors and performers of regional, national, and international acclaim. This series functions as a multidisciplinary lens through which to view the Museum's collection and special exhibitions.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member: $5
General Admission: $10
Senior (age 65+): $6

Thursday, January 31, 2019
4:30 pm - 6:00 pm

Claire Barry, Director of Conservation, Kimbell Art Museum

According to his biographer Ascancio Condivi, Michelangelo created his first painting, The Torment of Saint Anthony, when the young artist was only about twelve years old. This talk explores how the disciplines of art history, conservation and science united to help confirm the attribution of Michelangelo’s first painting, now in the collection of the Kimbell Art Museum.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member (Curators' Patron & above): FREE
SBMA Member (Collector's Patron and below): $10
General Admission: $15
Student (Valid student ID required): FREE

Thursday, January 31, 2019
7:30 pm - 9:30 pm

1st Prize winner and Audience Prize winner at the Trondheim (Norway) International Chamber Music Competition in 2017, the Maxwell Quartet has been hailed for "great communication" by The Strad Magazine and as "brilliantly fresh, unexpected and exhilarating" by The Scottish Herald. The Glasgow-based Maxwell Quartet is now firmly regarded as one of Britain's finest string quartets, with a strong connection to their folk music heritage and a commitment to bringing together wide-ranging projects and programs to expand the string quartet repertoire. Performing widely across Scotland, the quartet has established a reputation for delighting audiences with their "panache and conviction" (Strathearn Herald) and their "unnaffected enthusiasm" (North Highland Times). The quartet has held residencies at Oxford University, Perth Concert Hall and many chamber music festivals across the UK, including their own Loch Shiel Festival in the Scottish highlands.

The program includes Haydn’s String Quartet in E-flat major, Hob.III:71; Roukens’ Visions at Sea; Scottish Folk Music, and Beethoven’s Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 130

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member: $20
General Admission: $25

Sunday, February 3, 2019
2:30 pm - 4:00 pm

Maggie Nelson is a writer forging a new mode of nonfiction. Her writing resists categorization - her books span poetry, criticism, autobiography, theory, and the hybrid spaces in between. In heady visceral language, she invites the reader into her open ended and empathetic way of thinking. Through the dynamic interplay between personal experience and critical theory, Nelson not only broadens the scope of nonfiction writing, but also offers compelling meditations on social and cultural questions. Her many books include a study of poetry and abstract painting in 1950s New York, a meditation on the color blue, a work of criticism on the role of shock and violence in art, two autobiographical books about the murder of her aunt, and an exploration of queer family.

Parallel Stories is a literary and performing arts series that pairs art and artists with award-winning authors and performers of regional, national, and international acclaim. This series functions as a multidisciplinary lens through which to view the Museum's collection and special exhibitions.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member: $5
General Admission: $10
Senior (age 65+): $6

Thursday, February 14, 2019
4:30 pm - 6:00 pm

Naoko Takahatake, Associate Curator, Prints & Drawings, LACMA

In recent decades, interdisciplinary technical study of works of art, pooling the expertise of art historians, conservators, and conservation scientists, has provided valuable new insights into artists’ materials and working methods. Such collaborative research has productively addressed a range of far reaching art historical issues, including questions of authorship, chronology, creative process, and artistic intention. This talk will consider some contributions of technical examination and scientific analysis to our understanding of Renaissance works of art on paper, focusing in particular on research on the chiaroscuro woodcut, a pioneering color printmaking technique.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member (Curators' Patron & above): FREE
SBMA Member (Collector's Patron and below): $10
General Admission: $15
Student (Valid student ID required): FREE

Sunday, February 17, 2019
2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

Palmyra, in the heart of the Syrian Desert, was a rich trading center in Antiquity on the Silk Route between the Mediterranean and Central Asia. The city became a unique meeting place between the cultures of the Graeco-Roman world and the East. Art historian Nigel McGilchrist first visited Palmyra in 1978, and on two further occasions in the 1980s and 1990s. Now, much of what Nigel saw then has been devastatingly destroyed in the Syrian War and is lost to us forever. Nigel has slides, though, that he will share on a “trip” to Palmyra during one of SBMA Travel’s popular Armchair Travel lectures.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member: $5
General Admission: $8

Thursday, February 21, 2019
4:30 pm - 6:00 pm

Keith Christiansen, Chairman, Dept. of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

That art has this power to haunt us to such a degree that we scheme of ways to see what we have heard about or seen in reproduction or can easily access on the internet is one of those fascinating mysteries of modern life. A mystery, because it is by no means certain that the thing that haunts me will have the same effect on someone else. Because in the end, our responses to works of art are complex and personal and attempts to intellectualize the process seem to me doomed to failure. In this talk, Keith Christiansen shares some of his strategies for looking at Renaissance and baroque painting.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member (Curators' Patron & above): FREE
SBMA Member (Collector's Patron and below): $10
General Admission: $15
Student (Valid student ID required): FREE

Thursday, February 28, 2019
4:30 pm - 6:00 pm

Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Professor of European and American Art Since 1700, UC Berkeley

When Edgar Degas traveled across the sea to visit his Creole family in New Orleans in 1872, he continually expressed his anxiety about his sight and his difficulty apprehending or painting the black persons so novel to him. The artist claimed that the brevity of his visit justified his decision not to depict this foreign place so pervaded by a boldly visible racial difference. The unfamiliarity of the spectacle of blackness made Degas think about other French artists who might have attempted to meet such a challenge, for instance Manet. This talk analyzes the intersection of sight, blindness, race and Creole identity in the writings and art of Degas during this period in New Orleans and his return to Paris.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member (Curators' Patron & above): FREE
SBMA Member (Collector's Patron and below): $10
General Admission: $15
Student (Valid student ID required): FREE

Sunday, March 10, 2019
2:30 pm - 4:00 pm

Described by Sandra Cisneros as "capable of renewing one's faith in new fiction," Alex Espinoza's writing is filled with a sense of place and longing, and an idiosyncratic search for love, meaning, and unflinching truth. In an afternoon of reading and conversation, the author shares his thoughts on Southern California, masks, identity, cultural displacement, faith, the world of lucha libre, belonging, and why what should exclude us, empowers us.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member: $5
General Admission: $10
Senior (age 65+): $6

Thursday, March 14, 2019
7:30 pm - 9:30 pm

Formed in 1983 in the German wine region in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse, three Schmidt siblings – Sebastian, Nanette and Bernhard – join with violist Andreas Willwohl in a partnership dedicated to exemplary performances of chamber music. The Mandelring Quartet’s success in winning some of the world’s great competitions – the Munich (ARD), Evian, and Reggio Emilia (Premio Paolo Borciani) – launched an impressive international career that brings them to all corners of the globe. Today, their performing commitments take them to international musical centers such as Vienna, Paris, London, Madrid, New York, Los Angeles, and Vancouver, as well as regular tours to Central and South America, the Middle East, and Asia. Their discography include more than thirty CD recordings, which have been repeatedly awarded the German Music Critics’ Prize, and been nominated for the International Classical Music Award, confirming the Mandelring Quartet’s exceptional quality and wideranging repertoire.

Their program includes Beethoven's Op. 18, No. 1; Bartók's String Quartet No. 2; and Mendelssohn Op. 44, No.2.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member: $20
General Admission: $25

Friday, April 5, 2019
7:30 pm - 9:30 pm

The Quatuor Danel has been at the forefront of the European music scene since its founding in 1991, with major concert performances worldwide including Paris, London, and San Francisco. They have also been recognized for a number of groundbreaking recordings, including their recently reissued recording of the complete cycle of string quartets by Russian composer Shostakovich, considered one of the benchmark interpretations of [the quartets]. The Quartet made its American debut during the 2015-16 season, featuring concerts at New York's Frick Collection and the Clarice Smith in College Park, MD, as well as at concert series across the country. The ensemble is famous for its bold, concentrated interpretations of the string quartet cycles of Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Shostakovich, and Weinberg. Their lively and fresh vision of traditional quartet repertoire has won them lavish praise from both the public and the press.

The Quatuor Danel will perform Beethoven's Quartet in B-flat major; Op. 18, No. 6; Shostakovich's Quartet No. 6 in G major, Op. 101; and Weinberg's Quartet No. 6.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member: $20
General Admission: $25