Vian Sora: Outerworlds

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art is pleased to announce Vian Sora: Outerworlds, a multi-venue mid-career survey of internationally renowned abstract painter Vian Sora (b. 1976, Baghdad). This exhibition will assemble approximately 20 of Sora’s major works, charting her growth as an artist over a period of seven years (2016–2023).

Letter Forms

The written word is usually used to explain or describe a work of art—but what happens when the words themselves become an image?

Proscenium: Elliott Hundley

Proscenium: Elliott Hundley, a mid-career solo exhibition, sets the scene. Sculptures and paintings are activated as dramatic devices, stages rife with an overabundance of sets, props, actors—though not necessarily proffering straightforward scripts.

By Achilles’ Tomb: Elliott Hundley and Antiquity @ SBMA 

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art is organizing a mid-career solo exhibition with Elliott Hundley and has also invited him to rethink the display of Greco-Roman antiquities in SBMA’s Ludington Court. 

By Achilles’ Tomb juxtaposes the Museum’s renowned collection of antique sculpture and glassware with Hundley’s sculptures, paintings, and newly made collages. 

Modern Life: A Global Artworld, 1850-1950

We live with linked economies and global instantaneous communication. Change is constant. People are on the go. Modern life with its incessant movement began in the mid-19th century, as undersea telegraph cables, railroads, steamships, and colonial powers encircled the world. These same changes created a global art world with centers in cities such as Paris, Mexico City, and New York.

Portrait of Mexico Today

Portrait of Mexico Today is one of the only intact murals painted by David Alfaro Siqueiros while he was a political exile in Los Angeles in 1932.

Highlights of East Asian Art

The refreshed and newly configured Sterling Morton, Campbell, and Gould Galleries next to Ludington Court showcase a selection of works from China, Japan, and Korea, drawn from the Museum’s extensive permanent Asian Art collection and organized by SBMA Elizabeth Atkins Curator of Asian Art Susan Tai.

Highlights of South and Southeast Asian Art, Himalayas

Made from a variety of materials: clay, wood, metal, stone, textile, and paper, these works provide a broad view of the artistic expressions and devotional practices in India and their development and transformation in the Southeast Asian countries of Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, and the Himalayan lands of Nepal and Tibet.