Tag archives: Santa Barbara Historical Museum

Performing arts and the arts nonprofit sector of Santa Barbara took a huge hit in 2020, as COVID performed a scorched earth campaign across an already tenuous industry. Santa Barbara loves its art and its artists, but it has often suffered from the silo’ing of audiences and funding.  Philanthropists love having their names on new […]

The Santa Barbara Historical Museum is one of the cultural gems of our city with a collection of more than 80,000 irreplaceable objects and artifacts relating to Santa Barbara’s extraordinary past. For local history it’s a must. The museum complex was constructed in 1965 by the Santa Barbara Historical Society (now called Museum), which was […]

Though the beautiful and elegant Fiesta del Museo is cancelled this year, Project Fiesta: A History of Old Spanish Days is not. And what better place to see the latest exhibition than outdoors in the spacious and beautiful courtyard of the Santa Barbara Historical Museum, where fresh air and social distancing create an idyllic environment? […]

Thomas C. Parker, president and director of Hutton Parker Foundation, really knows how to celebrate history, and he is willing to share. The Foundation has recently completed a multimillion-dollar restoration of the historic Hill-Carrillo Adobe and is offering the beautifully appointed building to non-profit groups for meeting space – for free! In addition, one wing […]

The Santa Barbara Historical Museum (SBHM) invited members to celebrate the season and see the opening of their latest exhibition, the Henry Chapman Ford (1828-1894) collection. Holiday cocktails and canapés set the festive tone along with lighting and white fabric “walls.” Deputy director Dacia Harwood said that many thanks go to sponsors Sharon and David […]

The Santa Barbara Historical Museum (SBHM) gives one of the best Fiesta parties in town. The venue makes a perfect backdrop – it looks like a movie set and all we have to do is don our costumes and we’re ready for action! We entered through the front door and trekked through the galleries, one […]

A record 305 guests at the Santa Barbara Historical Museum for La Fiesta del Museo got a warm reception, but maybe too warm. President Bill Reynolds says the museum’s current central conditioning system, installed in the 1990s, does not cool the air sufficiently and is “inadequate” for the institution’s needs in keeping innumerable historical artifacts, […]

MJ‘s favorite painter, Thomas Van Stein, just completed a commissioned painting of the historic Knox-Cota building on Anacapa Street for the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation. The house was built in the 1870s for Dr. Knox and his wife. The building’s facade crumbled in the 1925 earthquake, and has been sitting as a rather […]

On four separate occasions over the past 40 years, my husband and I have evacuated due to wildfire. Each time, the first possessions that are packed in the car are our family photos. More important than art, electronics, books (well, maybe), or clothing, are the images of the important people, times, and events in our […]

The Santa Barbara Education Foundation, which serves 15,000 students with more than 15 programs county-wide with a $2 million annual budget, hosted its 20th annual Hope Awards at the Santa Barbara Historical Museum for 200 guests. The boffo bash in the institution’s courtyard, chaired by Cita Torres, focused on literacy and honored Kinko’s founder and […]

The Atchison family came to Santa Barbara from Centralia, Washington, in 1912 seeking health for the father who suffered from chronic stomach problems. Alas, salubrious Santa Barbara was not able to work its magic on Garrett, and he died that July. His wife Sarah had set up housekeeping in a home on Carrillo Street, and […]

The MClub held its first event of 2019 at the Santa Barbara Historical Museum (SBHM) with Richard and Amanda Payatt speaking and touring us through the exhibit, West Dressed Women. The Payatts have interesting credentials. Richard has the largest collection of British military uniforms in private hands in the United States. He was one of […]

Santa Barbara Historical Museum set its trustees, past and present, to work choosing favorite pieces of art from more than 3,000 works in the venerable institution’s vault for a Trusted Treasures exhibition featuring 16 works, with each piece accompanied by a photo of the trustee and a quote or two on why the painting was […]

The Santa Barbara Historical Museum (SBHM) opened up a delightful exhibit of the fashionistas of the Old West and what they wore. There was the gamut from prairie dresses perfect for a crossing to California in a covered wagon to what the senoritas in Santa Barbara wore for a wedding in the days of the […]

The Santa Barbara Historical Museum (SBHM) became a movie house for the evening with so many theater-goers that they had to have two showings. The film was a documentary about Riven Rock and the McCormick family. The producer was Frank McGinity, who lived for 27 years in the building that housed the movie theater for […]

Santa Barbara Historical Museum’s Costume Council has opened its new exhibition, The West-Dressed Woman, featuring 11 outfits from pioneer days to the 1960s, including a colorful kimono made for the late copper heiress Huguette Clark. Other restored exhibits include an ornate bodice owned by community activist Pearl Chase and a gown worn by opera singer […]

Santa Barbara Historical Museum’s Costume Council, which is restoring hundreds of clothes that have been stored in the museum’s 10,000-sq.-ft. basement for decades, hosted a lunch featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning author Bill Dedman, whose book Empty Mansions – about the late copper heiress Huguette Clark and her imposing 23-acre cliffside estate, Bellosguardo – was a New York […]

Few people today recognize the name Joe De Yong. Those who do, dimly remember he was the deaf artist protégé of Charles Russell and lived and worked in Santa Barbara for a time painting, drawing, and sculpting iconic Western images. Still fewer remember he also worked for years as technical advisor on dozens of Western […]

Every year, the Santa Barbara Historical Museum (SBHM) launches the Fiesta season with their party a couple weeks before the official Fiesta. They know how to do it and it just keeps getting better. If our Old Spanish Days roots come from Spain, it’s no wonder.  After living near Sevilla for seven years, I can […]

The Santa Barbara Historical Museum  (SBHM) has a special exhibit going on – “Missions in Watercolor” by Edwin Deakin. Art historian Jeremy Tessmer, who is also curator for Sullivan Goss, An American Gallery, was there to give us a lecture about the origins and history of the collection. Edward Deakin (1838-1923) was born in England […]