SBMA Online

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 lecture 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, and secondly examines how the hands of male experts "infected" female spaces, including paintings and pregnant bodies.

credit: Berthe Morisot, The Mother and Sister of the Artist (detail), 1869/170. Oil on canvas. Chester Dale Collection, National Gallery of Art, 1963.10.186.

Ticket Cost:
Virtual Experience via Zoom: FREE

"Rankine’s voice is one of unrelenting candor: teaching, chastening, changing, astounding, and humanizing the reader." —Macalester University

Acclaimed author Claudia Rankine joins SBMA for a conversation "on the path to understanding.” The talk begins with a screening of selections from Situations, a series of ten short videos collaboratively produced by documentary filmmaker John Lucas and Rankine. In the words of their creators: “These are multi-genre responses to contemporary America. The videos exist around public experiences in individual lives. These experiences turn into situations that resonate with us not only as people, but as citizens.” The videos both emerge from and are in dialogue with Rankine’s 2014 hybrid prose-poetry book Citizen: An American Lyric, which likewise amplifies the micro and macro racist aggressions that occur throughout the social and political fabric of the United States. Rankine and Lucas admit us into the liminal "in between" spaces where we might travel toward trust, and offer us a look at the disturbing ordinariness of what we have come to a accept. Their work is an invitation to participate in an "experimentation in directness."

Ticket Cost:
Virtual Experience via Zoom: FREE

Join SBMA for a first look at the newly renovated galleries!

SBMA Members are invited to join us for a virtual guided tour of the beautifully transformed and expanded galleries. Members will be among the first to see the stunning improvements to Ludington Court, McCormick Gallery, as well as the new Contemporary and Photography galleries.

We are deeply grateful to all of our SBMA Members for continuing to support the Museum during the renovation, and we look forward to sharing the results of the renovation with you!

Ticket Cost:
Virtual Experience via Zoom (SBMA Member): FREE

During this session, extend the spirit of International Women’s Day and find inspiration from the artist Barbara Kasten, who at 84 years old, continues to challenge spatial relationships in her work. Drawing from her photograph, Construct NYC 11 (1982), explore her depiction of a 3-dimensional space on a 2-dimensional plane. 

View the inspiration image for this class on the Museum’s online collection.

Required Supplies

• Prismacolor ebony pencil
• Eraser
• Pencil sharpener

Meet your Instructor
Tina Villadolid has been a Teaching Artist for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art for over 22 years. Connecting with the people in her community through art has brought her so much joy! Tina loves to paint with oils, sculpt with clay, create installation art, draw portraits with charcoal, and write songs. She is conversational in Spanish, has two grandchildren, is originally from New York City, and lives with her cat, Chappie James, Jr.

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.

Ticket Cost:
Virtual Experience via Zoom: FREE

Join Dr. Ruggiero on an exploration of Michelangelo, who saw the world through the myopic lens of the male nude set in abstract space and surrounded by an extraordinarily expressive range of colors, and ushered in a new interpretive style. Dr. Ruggiero will be the study leader on an SBMA Tour in Italy in 2022.

Ticket Cost:
Virtual Experience via Zoom: FREE

During this session, extend the spirit of International Women’s Day and find inspiration from the artist Barbara Kasten, who at 84 years old, continues to challenge spatial relationships in her work. Drawing from her photograph, Construct NYC 11 (1982), explore her depiction of a 3-dimensional space on a 2-dimensional plane. 

View the inspiration image for this class on the Museum’s online collection.

Required Supplies

• Prismacolor ebony pencil
• Eraser
• Pencil sharpener

Meet your Instructor
Tina Villadolid has been a Teaching Artist for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art for over 22 years. Connecting with the people in her community through art has brought her so much joy! Tina loves to paint with oils, sculpt with clay, create installation art, draw portraits with charcoal, and write songs. She is conversational in Spanish, has two grandchildren, is originally from New York City, and lives with her cat, Chappie James, Jr.

Ticket Cost:
Workshop via Zoom: FREE

Learn the basics of watercolor painting from SBMA Senior Teaching Artist Itoko Maeno. Focusing on the depiction of folds of cloth or clothing, this one-hour class is inspired by George Rickey’s Study of Drapery (1978). Study the artwork or set up your own drapery to use as inspiration while you paint.

View the inspiration image for this class on the Museum’s online collection.
 
 Required supplies:

• Watercolor paper
• Watercolor paint + brush
• Two cups of water
• Pencil
• Paper towel or cloth

Meet your Instructor: Itoko Maeno
Itoko has been a Teaching Artist with the Santa Barbara Museum of Art for over 20 years. With specialties in painting, printmaking, and ceramics, she provides art lessons to all ages ranging from kindergarten students to adults. Celebrated for her watercolors, she also enjoys painting in oil and acrylic. Besides teaching art, Itoko has illustrated more than 20 picture book titles, including My Way Sally, awarded the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Picture Book, and Minou, nominated for the Caldecott Honor.

Learn the basics of watercolor painting from SBMA Senior Teaching Artist Itoko Maeno. Focusing on the depiction of folds of cloth or clothing, this one-hour class is inspired by George Rickey’s Study of Drapery (1978). Study the artwork or set up your own drapery to use as inspiration while you paint.

View the inspiration image for this class on the Museum’s online collection.
 
 Required supplies:

• Watercolor paper
• Watercolor paint + brush
• Two cups of water
• Pencil
• Paper towel or cloth

Meet your Instructor: Itoko Maeno
Itoko has been a Teaching Artist with the Santa Barbara Museum of Art for over 20 years. With specialties in painting, printmaking, and ceramics, she provides art lessons to all ages ranging from kindergarten students to adults. Celebrated for her watercolors, she also enjoys painting in oil and acrylic. Besides teaching art, Itoko has illustrated more than 20 picture book titles, including My Way Sally, awarded the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Picture Book, and Minou, nominated for the Caldecott Honor.

Learn the basics of watercolor painting from SBMA Senior Teaching Artist Itoko Maeno. Focusing on the depiction of folds of cloth or clothing, this one-hour class is inspired by George Rickey’s Study of Drapery (1978). Study the artwork or set up your own drapery to use as inspiration while you paint.

View the inspiration image for this class on the Museum’s online collection.
 
 Required supplies:

• Watercolor paper
• Watercolor paint + brush
• Two cups of water
• Pencil
• Paper towel or cloth

Meet your Instructor: Itoko Maeno
Itoko has been a Teaching Artist with the Santa Barbara Museum of Art for over 20 years. With specialties in painting, printmaking, and ceramics, she provides art lessons to all ages ranging from kindergarten students to adults. Celebrated for her watercolors, she also enjoys painting in oil and acrylic. Besides teaching art, Itoko has illustrated more than 20 picture book titles, including My Way Sally, awarded the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Picture Book, and Minou, nominated for the Caldecott Honor.

Ticket Cost:
Workshop via Zoom: 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 describes the research for the catalogue raisonné, presenting anecdotes about newly found works and interesting discoveries, and provides examples of observations that have influenced a new understanding of Agnes Martin's art.

credit: Charles R. Rushton, Agnes Martin (detail), 1992. Silver gelatin print. © Charles Rushton.

Ticket Cost:
Virtual Experience via Zoom: FREE

Local writers, working in a variety of genres and forms, meet with participants for two, 90-minute sessions during consecutive weeks. Each writer, inspired by a work(s) of art in the Museum’s collection, chooses the theme, format, and form for the workshop; allowing both the writers and participants maximum choice. Participants have an opportunity to also share their writing. Sign up for both sessions with one writer or sample across disciplines.

Theme
Memoir: Getting from mixed feelings to clear thinking

The poet W. H. Auden said, “Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.” What is clear thinking about mixed feelings? And why do we want it? When we write memoir—the story of our own lives—mixed feelings come to the surface. How do we allow those feelings to emerge? And how do we shape them into art?

Inspiration Images
SBMA’s Carlos Orozco Romero, Mujer y niña (1940), and The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s He Nupa Wanica / Joseph No Two Horns, Shield (ca. 1885).

Meet your instructor
Nora Gallagher is the author of three memoirs (Knopf) and two novels. Her memoirs are in the tradition of Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton: the daily living out of faith and doubt rather than abstract "belief." In her latest memoir, Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic, Nora draws on her experience as a patient, and what she learned about vulnerability and resilience. She is also the author of two novels: Changing Light (Pantheon) and the just completed The Egidio Room.

Ticket Cost:
Virtual Experience via Zoom: FREE

Join Dr. Overton for a historical overview of Armenia and Georgia through the lens of art and architecture. With beautiful images as a backdrop, she will share on the fascinating sites she visited in 2019 when she was there for a month doing research and planning the SBMA tour Armenia and Georgia: Monasteries, Manuscripts, Mountains, and Modernism for which she will be the study leader in 2022. She will also be the study leader for SBMA’s Morocco tour in 2022.

Ticket Cost:
Virtual Experience via Zoom: FREE