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Mission
The mission of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art is to integrate art into the lives of people.
Strategic Plan – Summary Version
Strategic Plan Summary
Quick Facts about SBMA
Audience
As one of the leading art museums on the West Coast, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art serves a diverse audience of approximately 150,000 people annually. The Museum offers a wide variety of educational and interpretive programs to this broad audience. Our 75-member Docent Council provides over 800 gallery tours and slide talks annually.
Permanent Collection
The Museum’s collection of the arts of Asia, Europe, and the Americas includes paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, photographs, ceramics, glass, jades, bronzes, lacquer, and textiles. The broad areas in which SBMA holds a significant number of works of exceptional quality include international antiquities from China, India, Greece, Rome, Egypt, and the Near East and 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century art from Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Particular strengths of the collection are 19th- and 20th-century American and European art, contemporary American painting, photography, and the arts of Asia, especially China.
Education
Throughout its history the Museum has been bringing people and art together through a broad array of formal and informal learning opportunities for all ages, both in the Museum and out in the community. The Museum provides forty art education programs to over 40,000 people annually. These include academic, outreach and after school programs for K-12th grade students, activities and events for families, classes for college students and lifelong learning opportunities for adults and seniors. In addition, the Museum regularly organizes and hosts lectures, symposia, film series, and focused gallery tours for the Museum’s major exhibitions. Many of these programs involve collaborations with community organizations, schools and teachers, colleges and universities, as well as selected artists.
As an educational institution, SBMA has the following goals:
Commitment
Recognizing that art museums play a constructive role in society, we are committed to: