SBMA Online

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member: FREE
Adult: $5.00
Senior (age 65+): $3.00
Child (ages 6-17): $3.00
Under 6: FREE

All skill levels are invited to experience the tradition of sketching from original works of art in current exhibitions. Museum Teaching Artists provide general guidance and all materials.

Ticket Cost:
General Admission: FREE

Learn about Alfredo Ramos Martínez’s murals in a guided tour of the chapel of the Santa Barbara Cemetery. Designed by famed architect George Washington Smith, the chapel tells a fascinating story about early art patronage in Santa Barbara. Ramos Martínez was invited to paint a mural in the chapel in 1934, and the resulting work is an extraordinary example of the artist’s style and thematic interests. The tour will be led by David Petry, historian and author of The Best Last Place: A History of the Santa Barbara Cemetery, with the curator of Alfredo Ramos Martínez: On Paper.

RSVP required, space is limited. Event will take place rain or shine, with time subject to change based on the cemetery’s schedule. Questions: communityprograms@sbma.net.

Recorrido guiado del Cementerio de Santa Bárbara.

Aprenda más sobre los murales pintados por Alfredo Ramos Martínez en un recorrido guiado de la capilla del Cementerio de Santa Bárbara. Diseñada por el arquitecto George Washington Smith, la capilla cuenta una historia fascinante sobre el patrocinio artístico en Santa Bárbara en las primeras décadas del siglo XX. Ramos Martínez pintó el mural en 1934 y la obra es un ejemplo extraordinario de los temas recurrentes y el estilo del artista. El recorrido estará dirigido por David Petry, historiador y autor del libro The Best Last Place: A History of the Santa Barbara Cemetery, con la curadora de Alfredo Ramos Martínez: Sobre papel.

Se requiere confirmación; el espacio es limitado. El evento sucederá llueve o truene. El tiempo del evento está sujeto a cambios basados en el horario del cementerio. Tenga en cuenta que el recorrido se realizará en inglés. Preguntas: communityprograms@sbma.net

Explore the cosmos with guided tours of the SBMA exhibition The Observable Universe: Visualizing the Cosmos in Art, followed by a closer look at the night sky through telescopes. View constellations, nebulae, and the moon with astronomers from the Santa Barbara Astronomical Unit, partners of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, as they share their extensive knowledge of the science of the universe.

Tour times are 5:15 pm, 6:15 pm, and 7:15 pm.

The Thalea String Quartet brings together artists of Nigerian, Venezuelan, Japanese, and Canadian heritage. With repertoire as diverse as its members, and every bit as exuberant, Thalea connects with audiences on a musical, emotional, and personal level, from first-time listeners to string quartet aficionados. Top prizewinners at both the 2018 Fischoff and Chamber Music Yellow Springs Competitions, Thalea was founded in 2014 and made its U.S. début at the Kennedy Center in 2016. They have performed across North America and in Italy, France, and Belgium. “Thalea never failed to deliver a stirring performance.” - Calgary Herald

They will perform Aaron Copland’s Movement for String Quartet, a new work being written for the Thalea Quartet, Beethoven’s Op. 59 No. 2, and Three Folksongs in Counterpoint by African-American composer Florence Price.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member: $20.00
General Admission: $25.00

Join SBMA for a special evening in the galleries! Enjoy after-hours access to the Museum as well as tasty bites and specialty sips. Take in the mesmerizing works of Tatsuo Miyajima, and catch your last chance to see Alfredo Ramos Martínez: On Paper and The Observable Universe: Visualizing the Cosmos in Art.

Includes two drink tickets.

Space is limited. Get your tickets today!

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member: $10.00
General Admission: $15.00

Julian Brooks, Senior Curator of Drawing, J. Paul Getty Museum

Michelangelo is regarded as one of the most creative artists in western art history, using countless drawings to explore the dynamics of the human form and to solve compositional problems. Yet he is recorded as burning hundreds – perhaps thousands – of his sketches and cartoons. Julian Brooks, Senior Curator of Drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum, looks into the extraordinary phenomenon of Michelangelo and his draftsmanship.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member (Curators' Patron & above): FREE
SBMA Member (Collector's Patron and below): $10.00
General Admission: $15.00
Student (Valid student ID required): FREE

Internationally renowned Japanese artist Tatsuo Miyajima ingeniously crafts vividly glowing objects and installations from today's technology that create infinite worlds of being, space and time, all informed by his Buddhist practice. Miyajima will speak about his work in conversation with Charles Wylie, SBMA Curator of Photograph and New Media.

Organized by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Tatsuo Miyajima is the artist's first solo U.S. museum exhibition in over two decades and will be on view through April 19.

credit: 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

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member: FREE
General Admission: $10.00
Senior (age 65+): $6.00

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.

Instructor: Andrew Winer, Novelist and Professor of Creative Writing, UC Riverside

Ticket Cost:
General Admission: FREE

Join Mara Papatheodorou, a former travel editor at Bon Appétit and culinary expert, on a virtual journey to French Polynesia, in celebration of SBMA’s upcoming tour there. Learn all about Tahitian culture and cuisine, tastes and traditions, fact and folklore. A popular guest lecturer, commentator, panelist/judge, and presenter about food, travel, and entertaining, Papatheodorou promises to transport guests across the Pacific Ocean to the islands of French Polynesia to explore its rich culinary history and culture.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member: $5.00
General Admission: $10.00

All skill levels are invited to experience the tradition of sketching from original works of art in current exhibitions. Museum Teaching Artists provide general guidance and all materials.

Ticket Cost:
General Admission: FREE

“A novelist has two lives—a reading and writing life, and a lived life. He or she cannot be understood at all apart from this.”

Parallel Stories takes a close look at the life-long passions, prodigious productivity, and well-honed writing practice of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley in a far-ranging conversation with longtime friend, fellow author, and colleague in the Creative Writing program at UC Riverside, Andrew Winer. Often epic in scale and yet intimate in telling detail, Smiley’s multigenerational tales tell the story of middle America written, says Winer, “with a classic sense of humanity and compassion that have made her name part of any serious conversation about fiction in our time.” Hailed as one of America’s greatest living writers, Smiley was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001, and in 2006 she received the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. Her intimate evocations of American life have been compared to John Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom tetralogy; Updike himself praised Smiley for working on what he called “the edge of acceptable novel writing,” where she had replaced “plot and suspense with something freer and more lifelike.“

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member: $5.00
General Admission: $10.00
Senior (age 65+): $6.00

Hear from author Daniel Stone about the true story of an American food spy who traveled the world and transformed what America eats.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member: $5.00
General Admission: $10.00

James Glisson, Chief Curator, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens

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 will explore, Hammersley used control as way to free himself, to open his mind to new ideas, to play. It will begin by focusing on the SBMA’s Hammersley painting, Four awhile (1974), and will share insights drawn from scientific analysis and archival research.  The discussion will conclude by expanding the discussion to other artists from the mid-20th century who applied rules to structure their art making.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member (Curators' Patron & above): FREE
SBMA Member (Collector's Patron and below): $10.00
General Admission: $15.00
Student (Valid student ID required): FREE

“I’m a political poet—let us say a human poet, a poet that’s concerned with the plight of people who suffer. If words can be of assistance, then that’s what I’m going to use.”

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

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member: $5.00
General Admission: $10.00
Senior (age 65+): $6.00

All skill levels are invited to experience the tradition of sketching from original works of art in current exhibitions. Museum Teaching Artists provide general guidance and all materials.

Ticket Cost:
General Admission: FREE

Established in 2013, the Arod Quartet, based in Paris, has already captivated chamber music lovers, performing more than eighty 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.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member: $20.00
General Admission: $25.00

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.

Instructor: Ellen Whittet, Essayist & Lecturer, UCSB Writing Program

Ticket Cost:
General Admission: FREE

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 paper 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. Secondly, it examines how the hands of male experts ‘infected’ female spaces, including paintings and pregnant bodies.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member (Curators' Patron & above): FREE
SBMA Member (Collector's Patron and below): $10.00
General Admission: $15.00
Student (Valid student ID required): FREE

Grab your morning coffee with SBMA! Kick off your day with us for Member Morning in the galleries before the Museum opens to the public.

Enjoy docent-led tours of current exhibitions, catch a final look at the mesmerizing works of Tatsuo Miyajima.

Enjoy coffee and refreshments at 10 am, then enjoy a docent tour at 10:30 am. Stick around afterward and peruse the SBMA Store for a double-discount of 20% off unique exhibition-related gifts!

This event is open to all Members free of charge.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member: FREE

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.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member: $5.00
General Admission: $10.00
Senior (age 65+): $6.00

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 will describe 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.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member (Curators' Patron & above): FREE
SBMA Member (Collector's Patron and below): $10.00
General Admission: $15.00
Student (Valid student ID required): FREE