Drawing from the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s permanent collection, this exhibition presents an illustrative selection of works by artists who have applied the framework of Conceptual art to the medium of photography.
Exhibitions at SBMA
In addition to a selection of works from its critically acclaimed permanent collection, SBMA also presents temporary loan exhibitions of art from the past and the present.
For information on archived exhibitions please visit the Archives.
When visual artists make an image, they have to bring the inside outside by giving thoughts, fears, dreams, and life stories visible form. In this exhibition, each artwork has external signs telling about an inner world, whether real, fictional, or in-between.
Simply installed in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s Photography Gallery, Stillness invites contemplation and introspection via a select and small group of beautifully composed and printed images.
Since photography’s invention in 1839, photographers have attempted to reveal nothing less than the span of human experience. Spontaneously or deliberately composed, the photographs here demonstrate the camera’s all but unique ability to reflect, question, affirm, and sometimes revel in what it means to be present within a human form.
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.
Newly installed in the Preston Morton and Ridley-Tree galleries are works such as Annie Snyder's Still Life: Basket of Grapes and Pierre Bonnard's Garden with a Small Bridge.
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.
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.