Santa Barbara Museum of Art

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Santa Barbara Museum of Art, entrance facade

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art is an art museum in Santa Barbara, California . The collection of the museum, founded in 1941, includes works of art from antiquity to the present day . The departments for European art, American art and art from Asia are particularly extensive.

history

The foundation goes back to initiatives by various citizens of the city. In 1901, Alexander Harmer advocated making a number of studios available to local artists. In the 1920s, both the Santa Barbara School of Arts and the Santa Barbara Art Guild were founded . 1930 opened a named after the founder Mary Faulkner Gould cultivation of the Public Library ( Public Library ), who as Faulkner Memorial Gallery appropriate artists exhibit space offered. In addition to regional artists, national artists also presented their work here.

Mid-1930s decided the American Federal Government in Santa Barbara, a new post office ( post office ) in the Anacapa Street to build because the old post office building had become too small in the State Street no. 1130 for the required purposes. The move to the new building took place in May 1937. Thereupon the artist Colin Campbell Cooper, who lives in Santa Barbara, took the initiative and suggested in a letter to the newspaper Santa Barbara News-Press in July that the old post office building should be used as exhibition space for artists and turn it into an art museum. This idea immediately found important supporters in the newspaper editor Thomas M. Storke and the politicians Charles Leo Preisker and Sam Stanwood. They managed to purchase the building from the government for the relatively cheap price of $ 60,000. The building, designed by architects Francis W. Wilson and Oscar Wenderoth, cost $ 100,000 when it was completed in 1914.

In December 1939, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art was established as a non-profit organization. The art collector Buell Hammett took office as the founding president of the society. Other important members of society were the patroness Katherine McCormick, the landscape painter DeWitt Parshall and the art collector Wright S. Ludington. The old post office was rebuilt by Chicago architect David Adler and his colleague Chester Carjola from Santa Barbara. In line with contemporary tastes, they gave the building, which was originally built in Beaux Arts style , a new facade based on the Spanish colonial style and converted the interior into exhibition space. The renovation was funded by influential people in the city, including McCormick, Ludington and Hammett. In return, individual gallery rooms bear the names of the donors. In January 1940, Donald Bear, who had previously directed the Denver Art Museum , was hired as the first museum director. When the museum first opened to visitors on June 5, 1941, it only had a small inventory of 45 works of art. In the early days, therefore, mainly exhibitions on loan from private collectors were on view. Right from the start, the museum was very popular with the population and already in its first year of existence, the house had more than 75,000 visitors. The museum's educational program, which consisted of in-house courses and cooperation in art education with schools in the area, also contributed to the success.

1942 saw the first expansion of the museum with the Stanley R. McCormick Gallery , which was followed in 1963 by the Sterling and Preston Morton Galleries . Further expansions included the addition of the Alice Keck Park Wing in 1985 and the opening of the Jean and Austin H. Peck, Jr. Wing in 1998 . In addition, the Ridley Tree Education Center was founded in 1991 for the educational institutions of the museum . Since then, the museum has an area of ​​around 5,500 square meters. In addition to the exhibition galleries, there are administrative rooms, classrooms, a specialist library with more than 55,000 books, an auditorium with 154 seats, a museum shop and a museum café. Larry J. Feinberg has been the museum director since 2008.

Collections

European art

Berthe Morisot: Vue de Paris hauteurs du Trocadéro
Claude Monet: Charing Cross Bridge

The European Art Department focuses on French painting from the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Although the museum also has some works of French and English art from the 18th century, a large number of works are only found from around 1850. The museum shows the landscapes Les Glacis d'un Château-Fort by the painters of the Barbizon School -en-ruin by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and Vallée de Saint-Ferjeux, Doubs by Théodore Rousseau . With Chrysanthèmes d'été there is a typical floral still life by Henri Fantin-Latour , with Abbeville: Église de Saint-Vulfran a city view by Eugène Boudin and with Portrait de Mademoiselle Martha Hoskier a portrait of William Adolphe Bouguereau characteristic of the painting in the Salon de Paris .

The collection of workers from the French Impressionists is significant . The collection includes three works by Claude Monet : one view each of the London bridges Waterloo Bridge and Charing Cross Bridge as well as a landscape painting Villas à Bordighera on the Mediterranean coast . This is followed by other landscape paintings by other artists, such as Rives de la Creuse by Armand Guillaumin and St. Mammès, Rives de la Seine by Alfred Sisley . By Berthe Morisot , there is the Cityscape Vue de Paris hauteurs du Trocadero . Another Paris motif comes from Maurice Utrillo , whose Notre Dame Dorèe can be seen in the collection. The painting On the Outskirts of Paris by Vincent van Gogh is also part of the collection on permanent loan . There is also a landscape painting by Henri Rousseau in the museum with Le Donjon .

The symbolism is in the collection with a Salomé by Odilon Redon represented. The garden painting Jardin au Petit Pont by Pierre Bonnard and a flower still life by Édouard Vuillard by the artist group Nabis are on view. Further evidence of Fauvism is a flower still life by Andrè Derain and the urban landscape of Pont Saint-Michel by Henri Matisse .

The painting collection is supplemented by a small inventory of sculptures. Here you can find works by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux , Jean-Léon Gérôme , Constantin Meunier , Auguste Rodin , Wilhelm Lehmbruck , Henry Moore and Jacques Lipchitz . In addition, the museum has an extensive inventory of drawings and prints. In addition to works by Rembrandt van Rijn , Albrecht Dürer and Giovanni Battista Piranesi , the museum owns the complete works of satirical prints by Honoré Daumier .

American art

John Singer Sargent: Statue of Perseus by Night
George Bellows: Steaming Streets
Maurice Prendergast: Summer in the Park

In the American Art Department, the museum shows works by American artists from the period 1900 to the beginning of the 20th century. Later work can be found in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art. One of the earliest paintings in this department is the 1819 painting Watching the Boats by Alvan Fisher , a pioneer of North American landscape painting. The 1835 painting Landscape with Indians by the English-born painter Thomas Birch is in the Romantic style. The painters of the Hudson River School group were particularly influenced by European Romanticism . One of them was the painter Albert Bierstadt , who trained at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and of whom the museum owns the painting Mirror Lake, Yosemite Valley . Other typical North American landscapes from this school are The Meeting of the Waters by Thomas Cole , Janetta Falls, Passaic County, New Jersey by Jasper Francis Cropsey , View of the Beach At Beverly, Massachusetts by John Frederick Kensett and Mountain Landscape by Thomas Moran . Some painters in this group also created pictures while traveling in Europe. The paintings Isola Bella, Lake Maggiore by Sanford Robinson Gifford and Moonrise in Greece by Frederic Edwin Church bear witness to this . Other landscapes from the successor to the Hudson River School include Morning, Catskill Valley by George Inness , Indian Rock, Narragansett Sound, Rhode Island by William Stanley Haseltine and View of Yosemite Valley by Thomas Hill .

Examples of genre painting around 1870 are the works Boy Fishing by John George Brown and The Open Window by Samuel S. Carr . The museum owns the forest scene Woman in Autumn Woods by Winslow Homer , a representative of realism . George Henry Story also shows rural America in his picture Wonders of the Barn . Several painters thematized the Wild West of the United States. These include Frank Tenney Johnson with Cowboy with Lasso on Horse , Joseph Henry Sharp with Elk Foot, Pueblo of Taos, New Mexico and Frederic Remington with Fight Over a Waterhole .

American still life painting begins in the museum with an 1848 flower and fruit arrangement based on the Dutch model by Severin Roesen . There is also an Apple Blossom Branch on a Table by Martin Johnson Heade and a picture titled Grapefruit by Edward Chalmers Leavitt . Other examples of 19th century still life painting include The Secretary's Table by William Michael Harnett and Still-Life with Cake , Still-Life with Pipe, and the trompe-l'oeil style My Studio Door by John Frederick Peto .

American impressionism is represented in the collection with a few examples. With The Lady in Pink (Portrait of the artist's wife) and Lydia Field Emmett, there are two portraits of women by William Merritt Chase and with The Manhattan Club, a New York street scene by Childe Hassam . The chiaroscuro motif Perseus at Night (The Statue of Perseus in Florence) by John Singer Sargent , who lives mainly in Europe, can be found in the museum. Added to this is the late romantic depiction of Lake by Moonlight by Ralph Albert Blakelock and the California landscapes Santa Barbara Mission by Edward Henry Potthast and the California Coastal Range by Lockwood de Forest, which were created in the 20th century . There is also an early work by Stuart Davis, Yellow Hills, painted in 1919 .

Examples of interior painting at the beginning of the 20th century are Sideshow by Gifford Beal and Interior of His Brother's House in Boston by Walter Gay . The portrait painting of this period is represented by the painting Portrait of Master Douty by Thomas Eakins . A portrait of the dazzling writer Mercedes de Acosta by her husband Abram Poole dates from 1923 .

The museum also has a larger group of works by painters from the Ashcan School group . These include New York City's cityscapes Derricks on the North River by Robert Henri , East River from Brooklyn by William Glackens , City from the Palisades by John French Sloan , Summer in the Park by Maurice Prendergast , Steaming Streets by George Wesley Bellows and Sixth Avenue Shoppers by Everett Shinn . Rural motifs in this group include Redwoods by Arthur B. Davies , Royal Gorge, Colorado by Ernest Lawson and The Haunted House by George Benjamin Luks .

Sculptures from this period include the marble figures Frauenkopf by Elie Nadelman , Venezia by Larkin Goldsmith Mead , Ruth Gleaning by Randolph Rogers and a portrait bust of Charles Cheney as a child by William Henry Rinehart . Other sculptural works include the bronze head Head of Victory by Augustus Saint-Gaudens , the bronze cowboy figure Where the Best of Riders Quit by Charles Marion Russell and the mythological female figure Flight of Night by Paul Manship .

Modern art

In the field of art of the 20th and 21st centuries, works from Europe and America are shown. European painting is represented in the collection, for example with the expressionist paintings Davos by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Die Alte Brücke by Max Pechstein . There are also the abstract painting Linie-Fleck by Wassily Kandinsky or the surrealist works Femme fuyant l'incendie by Joan Miró and Honey is Sweeter than Blood by Salvador Dalí . The figurative painting can be found in the pictures Young Girl by Marc Chagall and Clowning by Georges Rouault . The museum also owns the wooden sculpture Pomona by Ossip Zadkine and the bronze head by Raymond Radiguet by Jacques Lipchitz .

Works by American artists include a Still Life with Fruit by Marsden Hartley , the Poppies floral painting by Charles Demuth , the Dead Cottonwood Tree landscape painting by Georgia O'Keeffe, and the surrealist work Second Song by Kay Sage . In addition, the November, Washington Square collection features a typical Edward Hopper cityscape . The museum also collects works by artists who have worked in California. These include the abstract picture Untitled (LAL), 1985 by Edward Moses , an assemblage Untitled by Edward Kienholz , various works by the Pop Art artist James Gill or the interior picture Woman and Checkerboard by Richard Diebenkorn .

Another area of ​​collecting is art from Latin America. These include images such as La Colina de los Muertos by David Alfaro Siqueiros , Las masas by José Clemente Orozco , Man Loading Donkey with Firewood by Diego Rivera , Madonna by Alfredo Ramos Martínez or Mujer y niña by Carlos Orozco Romero . Other works in this area are Dos Personajes by Gunther Gerzso Wendland , El fumador by Rufino Tamayo , The Casting of the Spell by Wifredo Lam , Composition by Joaquín Torres García and Fuga by Carlos Mérida .

In addition, the museum shows works of art that were created after 1945 as well as contemporary works. These include abstract paintings such as Composition from 1947 by Adolph Gottlieb and Untitled from 1956 by Ernst Wilhelm Nay or Op-Art such as Annul from 1965 by Bridget Riley . There are also works of media art such as TV Clock by Nam June Paik or, more recently, the steel sculpture Turning the World Inside Out by Anish Kapoor .

Asian art

From the beginning, the museum had a section with arts and crafts from Asia. It started with 19 Chinese textiles from the Qing dynasty , which were soon supplemented by 92 wood and stone sculptures as well as ceramic works. Over the decades, the department has grown to more than 2,600 exhibits spanning a period of more than 4,000 years. The oldest pieces in the collection include Chinese ceramics dating from around 2500 BC. Come from BC. Other exhibits from China, for example, various jade figures, crafted from clay zodiac figures from the Sui Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty , a ceramic dish from the Song Dynasty , a standing wooden sculpture of Guanyin - Bodhisattva from the Jin Dynasty or drawing on paper role of Gao Fenghan from 1745. There is a mandala from Tibet from the 16th or 17th century , which shows a deity painted on fabric.

In addition to Japanese lacquer art ( urushi ), the museum also has a larger collection of ukiyo-e woodblock prints from Japan . This includes work by Kobayashi Kiyochika and Katsushika Hokusai . In the field of painting, for example, the museum has a picture with legendary figures in the Ōtsu-e style by Shiokawa Bunrin . One of the exhibits from India is a sandstone figure depicting Balarama as the eighth avatar of Vishnu .

literature

  • Nancy Doll, Robert Henning, Jr., Susan Shin-tsu Tai: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, selected works . Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara 1991, ISBN 0-89951-078-7 .

Web links

Commons : Santa Barbara Museum of Art  - Collection of pictures, videos, and audio files

Footnotes

  1. https://www.sbma.net/about/history

Coordinates: 34 ° 25 '24.1 "  N , 119 ° 42' 13.9"  W.