SBMA and Opera Santa Barbara partner to present a season’s sampling of art and music with pop-up performances in the Museum’s galleries, inspired by SBMA’s collection and special exhibitions or other topical themes.

Art Matters Lecture with Frank Kelly, Ph.D. Senior Curator and Christiane Ellis Valone Curator of American Paintings, National Gallery of Art American landscape painter Thomas Cole was at the height of his artistic powers when he died at the age of 47 in 1848. We will never know for certain what Cole might have done, …

Bring the whole family to enjoy Teaching Artist-led activities in the Museum’s Family Resource Center. Paint a moonscape in blue and sepia ink on watercolor paper, inspired by Laura Gilpin’s Moonrise Over the Rio Grande (1946). Afterward, enjoy the galleries until 8 pm.

All skill levels are invited to experience the tradition of sketching from original works of art in current exhibitions. Museum Teaching Artists provide general guidance and all materials.

The New York Times award-winning author Susan Straight returns to read from her latest and much lauded novel, Mecca. Set in Southern California’s inland and high desert area, this is a story of freeways, wildfires, secrets, and struggles that is, at its heart, a love song for a place and its people. Told from different points of …

Writers of all levels are invited to participate in this informal exploration of the Museum's galleries as an impetus to writing. Monthly sessions are led by a visiting writer who begins with a conversation and prompt, partially inspired by works on view. Participants write on their own, then reconvene to share and comment on each …

SBMA and Opera Santa Barbara partner to present a season’s sampling of art and music with pop-up performances in the Museum’s galleries, inspired by SBMA’s collection and special exhibitions or other topical themes.

Art Matters Lecture with Harmon Siegel, Ph.D. Junior Fellow, Harvard Society of Fellows Impressionism has, from the beginning, been seen as an art of nature. Today, however, in the moment we call the Anthropocene, when human projects have transformed every corner of the planet and threaten to make it uninhabitable, this commitment may seem hopelessly …