On View/Opening in October 2022:
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Image: Edie Fake, Union Station, 2016. Gouache and ink on paper. SBMA, Museum purchase with funds provided by the Basil Alkazzi Acquisition Fund. Image courtesy of Western Exhibitions and the artist.
For Opacity
September 25, 2022 – January 15, 2023
Can an artist create a portrait without a face, a body, or even a life story? Can an artist create a portrait that is not even recognizable as a portrait? The answer is yes. This unusual idea of portraiture originates from Martinique-born poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant. In his book Poetics of Relation (1990), he called for “the right to opacity for everyone.” Glissant argued, transparency through legible terms and
clarifications threatens to misrepresent or ignore the aspects of self that are difficult to grasp. Opacity, instead, simply accepts that everything that makes us us cannot be understood completely and allows it to continue to exist as such. Through opacity, portraiture can most fully and authentically represent the shadowy parts of a person, those hard-to-explain aspects that cannot otherwise be depicted in conventional ways. This selection of works from the Museum’s permanent collection offers several approaches to seeing and recognizing these invisible parts of being and explores this expanded idea of portraiture that exists on the periphery and in the domain of the unknown.
Image: Marshall Brown, Pantheon, 2020. Collage on archival paper. SBMA, Museum purchase, General Acquisition Fund, 2022.8.1 ©Marshall Brown Projects
The Architecture of Collage: Marshall Brown
October 2, 2022 – January 7, 2023
The Architecture of Collage is Marshall Brown’s first solo museum exhibition and most comprehensive presentation of his collages to date. There are twenty-five artworks in the exhibition, including loans from the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago. Two of the most recent collage series, Prisons of Invention and Maps of Berlin, will premiere at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Brown cuts out photographs of buildings and reassembles them into levitating structures that hover between reality and fiction. He calls them chimeras after the lion-goat-snake creature of Greek mythology. Like the monster, whose parts were taken from existing animals, the parts of these collages are taken from actual buildings but when combined form something new. They are physical proof that borrowing and recombination can yield strikingly original results and achieve what contemporary art often does so well: suggest that the world could be different than what it is without specifying what that might concretely be.
Image: An-My Lê, American, Night Operations IV, 2003-2004. Laser exposed gelatin silver print. SBMA, Museum Purchase, Eric A. Skipsey Acquisition Fund.
A Time of Gifts: Six Years of Photographs Given to the Collection, 2016-2022
October 16, 2022 – January 15, 2023
Featuring over 80 superb works by Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Kwame Brathwaite, Nell Campbell, Awol Erizku, Janna Ireland, Aaron Siskind, and Hiroshi Sugimoto, among many important artists, A Time of Gifts celebrates the generosity of numerous Santa Barbara Museum of Art donors whose gifts of photographs and funds have allowed SBMA to add over 600 photographs to its collection between 2016 and 2022, roughly the era of the Museum’s recently-completed renovation project.
October 2022 Events:
A Cross-Disciplinary Conversation with Marshall Brown and Jonathan Lethem: Parallel Stories
Sunday, October 2, 2:30 pm
Layering, fragments, appropriation, cutting, higher cribbing, collage, and what artist Marshall Brown has called “creative miscegenation,” are all part of the crucible in which familiar themes are recast in art and literature. Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Lethem joins artist, Urbanist, Princeton University professor of Architecture, and critical-thinking futurist Marshall Brown in a
conversation about what Lethem termed the “Ecstasy of Influence.” This event is part of the opening celebration for the exhibition The Architecture of Collage: Marshall Brown, on view October 2, 2022 – January 7, 2023. Book signing to follow.
Parallel Stories is a literary and performing arts series that pairs art and artists with award-winning authors and performers of regional, national, and international acclaim. This series functions as a multidisciplinary lens through which to view the Museum's collection and special exhibitions.
Location: SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium, 1130 State Street, Santa Barbara $5 SBMA Members/$10 Non-Members
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Image: Jan Tichy, Installation no. 30 (Lucia), 2016. Photo credit: the artist.
Lucia Moholy: Documentary Absurdities Art Matters Lecture
Thursday, October 6, 5:30 pm
The artist and educator, Associate Professor at SAIC, Jan Tichy shares his work and research on the writer and photographer Lucia Moholy and discusses the place of contemporary art within historical research and preservation.
Location: SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium, 1130 State Street, Santa Barbara
Free Students and Museum Circle Members/$10 SBMA Members/$15 Non-Members
Photo by Zach Mendez
Pop-Up Opera
Thursday, October 6, 5:30 pm
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 the Museum’s collection and special exhibitions.
FREE
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Family 1st Thursday
Thursday, October 6, 5:30 – 7:30 pm
Imaginary Architecture Collage Bring the whole family to enjoy Teaching Artist-led activities in the Museum’s Family Resource Center. Imagine and design a dream building by collaging your favorite details from structures across the globe inspired by The Architecture of Collage: Marshall Brown. Afterward, enjoy the galleries until 8 pm.
Location: SBMA’s Family Resource Center, 1130 State Street, Santa Barbara
FREE
Sketching in the Galleries
Thursday, October 13, 5:30 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.
Free with reservation - Reserve a spot
Aeolus Quartet Chamber Music Concert
Monday, October 17, 7:30 pm
The Aeolus Quartet has been awarded prizes at nearly every major competition in the United States and performed across the globe. Formed in 2008, the Aeolus Quartet has performed in venues ranging from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Lincoln Center's Great Performers Series to Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, to Dupont Underground, a subterranean streetcar station in DC's Dupont Circle. They were the 2013–2015 Graduate Resident String Quartet at the Juilliard School and are currently Quartet-in-Residence at Musica Viva, NY. In addition to extensive touring throughout the United States, the 2021–22 season includes a Morgan Library performance as well as a feature on the Violin Channel. Returning to SBMA after a lauded performance in 2019, the Quartet will perform
Beethoven’s Quartet in Bb Major, Op. 18 No. 6, Caroline Shaw’s Blueprint, and Schubert’s Quartet in G Major, D. 887.
Location: SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium, 1130 State Street, Santa Barbara
$20 SBMA Members/$25 Non-Members
I’m goin’ to mess with you: T.C. Boyle Reading and Conversation
Thursday, October 20, 5:30 pm
In a reading and discussion of his electric, darkly humorous collection of 13 new short stories, the inimitable T.C. Boyle, Santa Barbara resident and bestselling writer of Talk to Me and Outside Looking In, ”messes with us” as the book inscription from Willie Dixon’s I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man promises.
A virtuoso of the short form, T.C. Boyle returns to share with us these inventive and masterfully told short stories characterized by his always biting satire, resonant wit, and a boundless, irrepressible imagination. Book signing to follow.
Location: SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium, 1130 State Street, Santa Barbara
$5 SBMA Members/$10 Non-Members
Third Thursday
Thursday, October 20, 5 – 8 pm
Visit SBMA for Third Thursday featuring the following free activities and offerings:
• Free Museum admission, 5 – 8 pm
• Music on the Front Terrace, 5 – 7:30 pm
• Complimentary docent Ten Talks for current exhibitions at 6 and 6:30 pm
• Teaching Artist-led art activities in the Family Resource Center, 5 – 7 pm
• Free raffle entry for a chance to win a gift bag of artful treasures from the Museum Store
· 1/3 off an SBMA Membership during this event only. Please note: Special price $55 (33% off $80) for a new Member joining at the Friend level. Available monthly on Third Thursday in person only, 5 – 8 pm.
FREE
Writing in the Galleries
Thursday, October 20, 5:30 pm
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 other's work. Please bring something on which to write.
In October, award-winning author and UCR Associate Professor of Creative Writing, Andrew Winer, leads a session inspired by Édouard Vuillard's Fuchsias and French Marigolds (ca. 1903), on view in Ridley-Tree Gallery
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Free with reservation - Reserve a spot
Día de los Muertos
Sunday, October 23, 11 am – 4 pm
Free Family Day For the 33rd year, the Museum honors the Mexican tradition of remembering the dead with a display of altars created by students in the Museum’s outreach programs and community groups. Día de los Muertos inspired art activities for all ages are offered on the Front Terrace and in the Family Resource Center. Free
