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Art Matters

Art Matters is presented by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and is a premier lecture series intended for continuing adult education in the history of art. Our distinguished speakers come from the Santa Barbara area, as well as across the country, and occasionally, abroad. Art historians, curators, and conservators offer fascinating insights into their areas of specialization.

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Art Matters Lecture with Joyce Tsai - Gift to an American City: The Past, Future, and Present of the Clyfford Still Museum

Thursday, October 5, 2023
5:30 pm – 6:30 pm

Joyce Tsai, Ph.D.
Director, Clyfford Still Museum

The American Abstract Expressionist artist, Clyfford Still, held on to 93% of everything he ever made and willed this extraordinary corpus, not to an existing art museum or gallery, to an unnamed American city. In so doing, he invests his art with civic potential. Joyce Tsai, director of the Clyfford Still Museum will illuminate the ways her institution seeks to fulfill that ambition.

Generous support for Art Matters is provided by the SBMA Women’s Board.

credit: Children responding to a painting by Clyfford Still, PH-1049, 1977, oil on canvas, 114 x 172 inches, Clyfford Still Museum, Denver. Photo credit: Joyce Tsai.  

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member (Museum Circles): FREE
SBMA Member (Enthusiast and below): $10.00
Non-Member: $15.00
Student (Valid student ID required): FREE

Art Matters Lecture with Suzanne Weaver - Why your five-year-old really couldn’t do it!

Thursday, November 2, 2023
5:30 pm – 6:30 pm

Suzanne Weaver
Independent Curator

Suzanne Weaver, a former museum curator of modern and contemporary art for over three decades and now, an independent curator living in Maine, will give a refreshing, thought-provoking and at times, irreverent talk about how to look at modern and contemporary art. Many of the insights she has developed over the years were inspired ironically, from trying to answer oft-heard disparaging remarks about contemporary art like “my five-year-old could do that,” “is it is art?” or “I don’t get it”.

Generous support for Art Matters is provided by the SBMA Women’s Board.

credit: Suzanne Weaver. Photo: © Kevin Todora. Courtesy San Antonio Museum of Art.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member (Museum Circles): FREE
SBMA Member (Enthusiast and below): $10.00
Non-Member: $15.00
Student (Valid student ID required): FREE

Art Matters Lecture with Matthew Welch - Edo Pop: Woodblock Prints and Popular Culture in Premodern Japan

Thursday, December 7, 2023
5:30 pm – 6:30 pm

Matthew Welch, Ph.D.
Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Minneapolis Institute of Art

With their crisp outlines, unmodulated colors, and surprising vantage points, Japanese woodblock prints (ukiyo-e) from the 18th and 19th centuries seem as fresh and captivating today as when they were produced. Sensuality, fashion, decadent entertainments and urban pastimes all reflect the popular tastes of young sophisticates in the premodern era. Matthew Welch, Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts will provide an overview of the social milieu of Japan's "floating world," and the artists who immortalized it through their prints. He will also discuss several contemporary artists whose works reference the ukiyo-e tradition.

Generous support for Art Matters is provided by the SBMA Women’s Board.

credit: Kabukidō Enkyō, 1749-1803. Actor Ichikawa Yaozō III as Umeōmaru, 1796. Color woodblock print. Minneapolis Institute of Art, Bequest of Richard P. Gale, 74.1.192.

Ticket Cost:
SBMA Member (Museum Circles): FREE
SBMA Member (Enthusiast and below): $10.00
Non-Member: $15.00
Student (Valid student ID required): FREE