A special one-day lecture series. Expert art historians offer detailed glimpses into some of the many facets of the flower-and-bird genre in Chinese painting and reveal how these images of intimate nature can be thresholds to worlds rich with beauty and private emotions.

Artists of all levels are invited to paint in the garden under the heady double influence of Lotusland and Master Painter of the lotus garden, Bada Shanren. Participants gather for a brief introduction to the Chinese tradition of Bird and Flower painting, and then go off to explore the scene and site that most inspires …

In this conversation, resonating with both the past and tradition exemplified in the exhibition Flowers on a River and with the distillation and duality explored in Inside/Outside, Jenny Xie opens up, as US Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera described, “multiple terrains of seeing.” With longing and memory, nuance and subtlety, the “anxiety of bilingualism,” and the unknowability of …

As part of, Inside/Outside, an exhibition of recent acquisitions, SBMA is pleased to invite Keith Mayerson for a conversation with James Glisson, Curator of Contemporary Art. Keith Mayerson has long swum in the sea of mass media that we exist in and reframing them by painting them, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art recently acquired …

At the California Nature Art Museum (formerly the Wildling Museum), Second Floor Valley Oak Gallery Ten chapters  and 170 photographs vividly describe conservation efforts observed from  Chuck Graham’s kayak. In February 2021, after photographing a bald  eagle on the cliffs surrounding Scorpion Anchorage, Graham was inspired  to create this pertinent and breathtaking ode to Channel …

Beloved by artists across the decades for his fierce, uncompromising dedication to art, John Densmore occupies a rarified space in pop culture. His musicianship landed him in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His writing consistently earns accolades and has appeared in a range of publications including the Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone. As his friend …

Art Matters Lecture with Joan Kee, Professor of Art History, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor How might we think about art and its histories from the perspective of a “global majority”? Spanning North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, Joan Kee looks at the relationships that formed between Black and Asian artists at critical historical junctures—including …