Santa Barbara Museum of Art

Happy #NationalHatDay! Are you wearing your favorite hat today? Image: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Bearded Man in a Cloak and Tall Hat, ca. 1750. pen and brown ink wash on lightweight paper. SBMA, Gift of Wright S. Ludington.

Are you looking for something new to watch in the new year? There are so many great videos on the SBMA YouTube channel including Studio Sunday instructional videos, Art Matters, Parallel Stories, and Curator’s Choice lectures, exhibition extras, and more. Subscribe today to never miss a video! https://www.youtube.com/watch

#HappyBirthday to artist Henri Fantin-Latour who was born on this day in 1836! Fantin-Latour was a French painter and lithographer best known for his flower paintings and group portraits of Parisian artists and writers. Please enjoy his work in the SBMA collection to celebrate his birthday! Image: Henri Fantin-Latour, Pansies in a Basket, n.d. Oil on canvas. SBMA, Gift of Mary and Leigh Block.

#HappyBirthday to Helen Frankenthaler! Frankenthaler was an American abstract expressionist painter who began exhibiting her large-scale abstract expressionist paintings in contemporary museums and galleries in the early 1950s. To celebrate her 92nd birthday, please enjoy this work from the SBMA collection! Image: Helen Frankenthaler, "Green Sway," 1975. Acrylic on canvas. SBMA, Collection of John and Zola Rex.

We bet that you and your family have been making lots of great art at home this winter! We would love to see what you are creating! Try this fun Draw Your Dream art-making prompt and share your creations with us by tagging us on social media or email your photos to [email protected]. When you email us a picture of your artwork, we will post it in our Community Art Gallery on Flickr! Don’t forget to send us the title of your work and your artist first name if you want! #SBMAatHome #familyartmaking #communitygallery #SantaBarbaraMuseumofArt

#ThrowbackThursday time! Since its doors opened in 1941, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art has consistently been dedicated to collectingan activity that has contributed to the growth of the permanent collection in significant ways. Art produced on the West Coast is a major part of this endeavor. The 2014 exhibition Left Coast: Recent Acquisitions of Contemporary Art presented an overview of the Museum’s collecting habits in contemporary art. Featuring over 30 works in a va...riety of media, including painting, photography, works on paper, and sculpture, many of the works in the exhibition were on view at the Museum for the first time. Tying these works together was the pervasive sense of individuality demonstrated in each, adding weight to the justification of the delineation of this side of the country as not just the West Coast, but also the Left Coast. Image: Installation view, Left Coast: Recent Acquisitions of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, May 25 September 14, 2014. See more

Today is #ThrowbackThursday! Let’s take it back to 2014 when Alice Aycock Drawings: Some Stories are Worth Repeating was on view at SBMA! This exhibition was the first comprehensive exploration of this vital aspect of the renowned sculptor’s creative process. Partnering with the Art, Design & Architecture Museum at UCSB, this two-venue exhibition traced Alice Aycock’s career from 1971 to the present, highlighting the major themes that have governed her artistic practice. While Aycock is best known for her large-scale installations and outdoor sculptures, her drawings capture the full range of her ideas and sources. Image: Installation view, Alice Aycock Drawings: Some Stories are Worth Repeating, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, January 26-April 20, 2014.

If you are still working from home, be sure to download some of the pre-cropped images from the Museum's permanent collection and use them as an artful background on your next Zoom call. Don’t forget to share your favorites with your friends and coworkers! https://www.sbma.net/zoomimg Image: Kishi CHIKUD, Japanese, 1826-1897, Crows in Autumn (detail). Ink and color on gold-leaf ground; pair of six-fold screens. SBMA, Museum purchase with funds provided by Lord and Lady Ridley-Tree, Priscilla Giesen, and special funds.

Stay safe and visit SBMA virtually! Check out all of the works that have been recently added to the online collection, browse through all of your old favorites, and stay tuned for more great works to be added. http://collections.sbma.net/collections Image: Guillermo Meza, Abstract of Trees, 1962. Oil on masonite. SBMA, Gift of Charles A. Storke. Estate of Guillermo Meza / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Happy Veterans Day friends! A big thank you to all the men and women for their dedicated service to our country! Wishing you health and safety from all of us at SBMA! Image: Jasper Francis Cropsey, Landscape, ca. 1855-1870. Oil on canvas, mounted on board. SBMA, Gift of George F. MacMurray.

There’s still time to register for a virtual lecture via Zoom with Justin Underhill on Tuesday, December 1 at 4 pm! At Artificial Intelligence and Art: The Case of Harold Cohen Underhill explores the work of Harold Cohen (1928 2016), a pioneer of art made by artificial intelligence. Cohen taught for decades at UC San Diego and wrote the art-making computer program AARON in the 1970s. For more information, visit https://www.sbma.net/events/underhillai. Image: Harold Cohen's AARON program making a drawing, 1987.

The holidays are right around the corner! Do you have a holiday dress picked for the season? Here’s an #OOTD inspiration for you from the SBMA collection! Image: Samuel S. Carr, The Open Window (Contemplation), (detail) 1870s-1880s. Oil on canvas. SBMA, Gift of Charles C. and Elma Ralphs Shoemaker.

Visit SBMA virtually from home today! We’ve have been working hard to bring the artwork in our collection to you at home. Spend some time enjoying all the new works that have been recently added to the online collection, browse through all of your old favorites, and stay tuned for more great art to be added! http://collections.sbma.net/collections Image: Frederic Leighton, An Athlete Wrestling with a Python, (detail) 1877 modelled; 1903 cast. Bronze. SBMA, Museum purchase with funds provided by Lord and Lady Ridley-Tree.

If you are looking for something new to watch, subscribe to the SBMA YouTube channel! There are so many great videos to check out including Studio Sunday instructional videos, Art Matters, Parallel Stories, and Curator’s Choice lectures, exhibition extras, and more. https://www.youtube.com/watch

This holiday season, take a virtual trip with SBMA from the comfort of your home! With SBMA, find inspiration for your future travels by reviewing past tours, listening to short artist talks online, reading travel articles, and more! For more opportunities to travel virtually, visit https://www.sbma.net/travel/armchair

Don’t forget to register for a FREE Art Matters lecture (via Zoom) with Mark Castro from the Dallas Museum of Art on Thursday, December 3 at 3 pm! In the aftermath of Mexico’s civil conflict from 1910 to 1920, artists played a vital role in the construction of a new national identity. The works of the famous mural painters José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros epitomized this transformation, capturing scenes from Mexico’s past, present, and an imagi...ned future. Although of critical importance, these monumental works represent one facet of the rich history of Mexican modern art. This talk offers a glimpse of the complex history of innovation and debate that shaped Mexican art and in turn influenced modern art across the globe. You won’t want to miss it! Visit tickets.sbma.net to reserve a spot. Image: David Alfaro Siqueiros, La colina de los muertos (detail), 1944. Duco on board. SBMA, Gift of Mrs. MacKinley Hel, 1969.35.51. David Alfaro Siqueiros / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SOMAAP, Mexico City. See more

Have you ever wanted to explore the art of collage? Here's your chance! Join us for a FREE Introduction to Drawing and Collage Adult Studio Art Workshop (via Zoom) on Thursday, November 18 at 5 pm! Explore a contemporary approach to creating the illusion of space, gravity, and movement. Draw inspiration from Robin Vaccarino's Freeze Frame series, which combines an atmospheric background with detailed graphic elements. SBMA Senior Teaching Artist Tina Villadolid explores the value scale, thumbnail sketches, how to measure distance and angles with your pencil and eye, and going from sketch to collage and back again. To register or for more information, visit https://tickets.sbma.net/.

We are so excited for you to visit SBMA to see Important Works on Paper from the Permanent Collection! Showcasing drawings, photographs, and prints from all four Museum departments, this installation represents the breadth and variety of the permanent collection, both chronologically and geographically. Davidson and Colefax Galleries are now devoted to rotations of works on paper, allowing for the display of rarely shown artworks and new discoveries. This is an exciting op...portunity to shed new light on artworks which are usually kept out of view, precisely because they are so sensitive to light. The multiple rotations will celebrate the ways in which these delicate and precious works offer unique insights into the artistic process, from the intimacy of drawing and painting on paper, to the technical innovations of printmaking and photography. Enjoy half price admission Wednesday Sunday, 11 am 5 pm, with early morning admission hours for Seniors 9 11 am. To ensure social distancing, advance reservations are required at tickets.sbma.net. Image: Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Kabuki Actor Ichikawa Danjr VIII as Jiraiya (center) with a Monster Toad, 1852. Color woodblock print, triptych. SBMA, Gift of the Frederick B. Kellam collection. See more

Mark your calendars! The Museum Store is holding its Once-a-Year sale event November 21 29! Shop sale tables of home décor, children’s toys, apparel, books, and other gifts marked down 25% 75%. This year we will extend the location of the sale into the Family Resource Center area to allow for safe social distancing. Please enter through the Museum Store. Members discount cannot be combined with sale items. For more information, visit www.sbmastore.net

#FlashbackFriday with us to 2012 when Pasadena to Santa Barbara: A Selected History of Art in Southern California, 1951 1969 was on view at SBMA! This exhibition focused on the legacy of two of Southern California’s leading venues for contemporary art since the 1940s: the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Pasadena Art Museum (known from 1941 to 1953 as the Pasadena Art Institute, and since 1975 as the Norton Simon Museum). These two institutions pioneered what is now ...perceptible as a common strategyto exhibit the work of local artists living and active in Southern Californiaalongside the work of influential modern and contemporary artists from other parts of the United States and Europe. Image: Installation view, Pasadena to Santa Barbara: A Selected History of Art in Southern California, 1951 1969, February 11 - May 6, 2012. See more