The Santa Barbara Sea Glass & Ocean Arts Festival (SBSGOAF) is having an Instagram silent auction from October 11-18, with 100% of the proceeds going to @sbmaritimemuseum. The Santa Barbara Maritime Museum has been closed for the duration of the pandemic and may not be able to reopen until the end of the year. We wanted to help them out, and we are hoping you will support our efforts. 12 amazing professional artists are transforming wood fish into beautiful original art for you to bid on!

Makers Market is the best outdoor market that Santa Barbara has to offer. Meet the artisans in person. This market offers unique one of a kind items in an outdoor European style setting.

Part I (March 22 – July 5, 2020): Works on Paper
Preston Morton Gallery

Part II (May 10 – August 30, 2020): Painting & Sculpture
Davidson Gallery

This two-part exhibition highlights recent acquisitions to SBMA’s permanent collection of contemporary art. Featuring over 40 artworks in a variety of media, including painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, and sculpture, the majority of the objects are on view at SBMA for the first time. These include painted works on paper by emerging artists acquired through the recently established Basil Alkazzi Acquisition Fund, as well as significant pieces by internationally recognized artists such as Sterling Ruby, Andrea Bowers, and Nigel Cooke. Tying these artworks together is a distinct sense of individuality, innovative use of materials, and playful ambiguity between traditional artistic genres.

The exhibition is comprised of works from artists in various stages of their careers, ranging from the emerging to the well-established. Artists include: Scott Anderson, Edgar Arceneaux, Elizabeth Bonaventura, Andrea Bowers, Bruce Conner, Nigel Cooke, Miles Coolidge, Petra Cortright, Noah Davis, Wim Delvoye, Jacci Den Hartog, Daniel Douke, Jim Drain, Vernon Fisher, Helen Frankenthaler, Peter Halley, Frederick Hammersley, Zach Harris, Naotaka Hiro, Mustafa Hulusi, Nathan Huff, Jim Isermann, Raffi Kalenderian, Tom Knechtel, Emma Kohlmann, Hew Locke, Eamon Ore-Giron, Carl Ostendarp, Cheryl Pope, Nathlie Provosty, Sterling Ruby, Aaron Siskind, Jeni Spota C., Donald Sultan, Stephanie Washburn, and Jane Wilbraham.

This exhibition is curated by Julie Joyce, Senior Curator, ArtCenter College of Design (and former Curator of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art) with assistance from Rachel Heidenry, Curatorial Assistant, Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

Image: Nathlie Provosty, "Council, Untitled (16-38)" (detail), 2016. Watercolor on paper, diptych. SBMA, Museum purchase with funds provided by The Basil Alkazzi Acquisition Fund, 2018.10.2a,b. © Nathlie Provosty.

The Preston Morton Collection, which forms the core of American art at SBMA, was gifted in 1961 upon the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Museum’s founding. In so doing, Preston Morton ensured that SBMA could boast one of the most comprehensive overviews of American art from the 18th to the mid-20th century among mid-sized institutions. The timing of the gift was significant, representing a corrective to the European bias of midcentury canonical modernism and a proud reassertion of home-grown American art.

This selection of small format paintings is a reminder of the breadth of the Museum’s holdings in this area. Oil and brush conjure the illusion of near and far persuasively, from the close perspective of still life, to the life-size proportions of bust portraiture, to sublime expanses of land and sky. Whether within hand’s reach or at an immeasurable distance, both types of visual experience are captured within the confines of a canvas no more than 15 inches in diameter.

Artists represented include William Merritt Chase, Frederic Edwin Church, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Thomas Eakins, Walter Gay, George Inness, George Luks, Jervis McEntee, John Frederick Peto, Levi Wells Prentice, Edward Henry Potthast.

Image: William Merritt Chase, "Children on the Beach" (detail), 1894. Oil on board. SBMA, Bequest of Margaret Mallory.

HARVEY opens March 27 at Matilija Auditorium. Produced by Ojai Performing Arts Theater.

Announcing the Channel City Camera Club's Print Exhibition from March 3 to March 30, 2020 in the Goleta Valley Library at 500 North Fairview.

We are the living crew of Lata, the Polynesian culture-hero who built the first voyaging canoe and navigated across the Pacific. We are the only Polynesians left who still use only ancient designs, materials, and methods. In our films we share our history, motivations, and skills through story-telling, canoe building, and wayfinding, and we invite everyone to reconnect with ancestors and sustainable lifeways.

Get started with La Boheme Dance Group for Summer Solstice Parade 2020 - Meet & Greet sign-up event with DJ Darla Bea!

60 years ago, a young Jane Goodall arrived on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, Tanzania for the first time. Without realizing it, she would soon change the world forever. 26-year-old Jane Goodall was tasked with being the first to formally observe and better understand our closest living relatives in the animal kingdom: wild chimpanzees. Jane’s subsequent groundbreaking discoveries revealed remarkable truths about chimpanzee behavior and humankind. Today, Dr. Goodall and the Jane Goodall Institute have redefined species conservation to put people at the center. Dr. Goodall travels around the globe to spread hope and turn it into action to improve the well-being of people, other animals and the environment we share. Hear these stories and more in her own words as Dr. Goodall takes us on a journey of discovery through her childhood dreams of living alongside wildlife, first steps in Gombe, greatest revelations and her reasons for hope.

“Hers is a powerful message to protect the inherent rights of every living creature, to provide hope for future generations and to sound an urgent call against the greatest environmental threat of all – climate change. Anyone who has heard her speak, or heard her story, has been mesmerized by her life’s work and moved by her philanthropic legacy.” – Leonardo DiCaprio, for Time’s 100 Most Influential People of 2019

Lobero Libretti. Local historian Hattie Beresford will share stories from the absolutely fabulous history of Santa Barbara’s community theaters, the old Lobero Opera House and the “new” Lobero Theatre. The varied performers that have tread the boards include some of the most notable artists of the day and some of the strangest. Grand operas, minstrel shows, phrenologists, magicians, dramas, comedies, and bicycle exhibitions; you name it, it played here. Come take a peek behind the curtain as Hattie spotlights some of the fascinating and funny things that happened along the way to the theater.

France’s world-renowned Lyon Opera Ballet performs the West Coast premiere of its acclaimed Trois Grandes Fugues, a revolutionary program featuring three responses to Beethoven’s beloved masterpiece “Grosse Fuge” by three major female choreographers – France’s rebellious Maguy Marin, America’s meticulous Lucinda Childs and Belgium’s hypnotic Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. The acclaimed 35-member company is known for its exceptionally ambitious and diverse repertory, showcasing a stunningly broad range of choreographers, from Merce Cunningham to William Forsythe. With this “simple yet audacious idea” (The New York Times), the company highlights different interpretations of choreography, movement and musicality, performed to the fullest by an extraordinary cast of dancers.
“In Trois Grandes Fugues, the 35-member company brings together a magisterial trio of choreographers… With each of their highly individual settings we hear, see and feel Beethoven’s fugue in fabulously new ways.” The Guardian (U.K.)

Vegan Chef Challenge to Return to Santa Barbara in April, Expands to Oxnard and Ventura : Open call to area chefs to join the challenge