SBMA Online

Welcome back to SBMA! Advance ticketing reservations are highly recommended and guarantee your entry time.

Todd Cronan
Associate Professor of Art History, Emory University 

Born and trained in Vienna, R. M. Schindler came to Los Angeles in 1920, working in the office of Frank Lloyd Wright. After leaving Wright's office, Schindler went on to become the most influential modern architect in Southern California. This talk explores his enigmatic approach as a designer, from his infamous bohemian mecca, the Kings Road House, to his last great "translucent" works, including the remarkable Janson and Tischler Houses. In many ways, Schindler's work remains a mystery, full of seemingly arbitrary shapes, patterns, and angles they seem to many like futuristic set designs for early Hollywood film. We will try and unravel some of the mysteries that surround this astonishing body of work.

This event is in person at Santa Barbara Museum of Art's Mary Craig Auditorium.

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 book Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member (Zoom): FREE
General Admission (Zoom): $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.

Exhibition curator and ArtCenter College of Design Senior Curator Julie Joyce will focus 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.

Ticket Cost:
General Admission: FREE

Writers of all levels are invited to participate in this informal exploration of the Museum’s newly reopened galleries as an​ impetus to writing. Each session is led by a visiting writer 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.

The September session is led by novelist and UCR Professor of Creative Writing Andrew Winer, who writes and speaks about literary, philosophical, and artistic matters and is the author of the novels The Marriage Artist and​ The Color Midnight Made. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, he is presently completing a novel and a book on the contemporary relevance of Friedrich Nietzsche’s central philosophical idea, the Affirmation of Life.

Ticket Cost:
General Admission: FREE

During this intimate 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 double memoir 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.

This event is in person at Santa Barbara Museum of Art's Mary Craig Auditorium.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member: FREE
Non-Member: $5.00

Writers of all levels are invited to participate in this informal exploration of the Museum’s galleries as an impetus to writing. Monthly sessions are led by a visiting writer who begins with a conversation and prompts, partially inspired by works on view. Participants write on their own, then reconvene to share and comment on each other’s work. Please bring something on which to write.

In November, novelist and UCR Professor of Creative Writing Andrew Winer leads the final of his three Fall sessions in the Museum’s new Contemporary Art Gallery.

Ticket Cost:
General Admission: FREE

Alicia Boswell
Assistant Professor, History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara

In the ancient Andes, metallurgical technology was driven by an ideological system that imbued metals with sacred properties. Unlike Old World societies, where metallurgical technology developed in response to the demand for utilitarian goods, in the ancient Andes, gold, silver, and copper alloys were used to create regalia worn by elites. These objects lended authority and power to those that wore them—in life and death. This lecture discusses the role of regalia in the Moche world, a society that thrived on what today is the north coast of Peru in the first millennium. 

This event is in person at Santa Barbara Museum of Art's Mary Craig Auditorium.

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