SBMA Online

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

Matthew Robb, Chief Curator, Fowler Museum at UCLA

In the summer of 1966, the May Company’s store on the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax held a sale of approximately 4,000 items of pre-Columbian art. The sale, sponsored by Morton D. May, president of the company and a well-known art collector himself, was part of a larger trend when pre-Columbian art experienced a moment in the collecting spotlight across the country, particularly in urban centers like Los Angeles. Dealers like Earl Stendahl had established the viability of collecting such objects as art in the 1930s. They had also developed a roster of clients that included Hollywood luminaries like Vincent Price, whose cultural cachet extended to the objects they owned, promoted, and sold. Price – like May, a native of Saint Louis – shared May’s conviction that art of all kinds should be accessible to and even buyable by a broad swath of the public. These personalities moved along a spectrum of mass media that included print advertisements, television appearances, and movies where pre-Columbian art objects featured as primitivist MacGuffins that completed the backdrops of modernist homes.

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

Start your day off with art! Join SBMA for Member Morning in the galleries before the Museum opens to the public. Grab your morning coffee at SBMA, and enjoy docent-led tours of current exhibitions.

Enjoy coffee and refreshments, as well as docent tours starting at 10:20 am. Stick around afterwards 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

Winner of the prestigious CMA Cleveland Quartet Award, Philadelphia’s Jasper String Quartet is the Professional Quartet in Residence at Temple University’s Center for Gifted Young Musicians. The Jaspers have been hailed as “sonically delightful and expressively compelling” (The Strad) and The New York Times named their latest album, Unbound, as one of the 25 Best Classical Recordings of 2017. “They match their sounds perfectly, as if each swelling chord were coming out of a single, impossibly well-tuned organ, instead of four distinct instruments.” (New Haven Advocate)

Their program includes Beethoven’s Op. 18, No. 4, Vivian Fung’s Quartet No. 3, and Quartet in D minor, D. 810 “Death and the Maiden” by Schubert.

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

Celebrate the season with the entire family at SBMA! Join us for a Member Holiday Party featuring live musical performances, art activities, refreshments, and a closing-day tour of Salt & Silver: Early Photography, 1840 – 1860.

Get in your holiday shopping at the SBMA Store with an extra-festive 20% discount off an array of one-of-a-kind gifts. Plus, find unique jewelry at a special Trunk Show during the festivities!

This event is open to all Members and their families free of charge. RSVPs are requested.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member: 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

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member: $5.00
General Admission: $10.00
Student (Valid student ID required): $5.00

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

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

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

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

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

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