Considered critically endangered today, the Kākāpō is a nocturnal flightless parrot endemic to New Zealand. Captured in a hand-colored lithograph, this particular Kākāpō belongs to the 1873 book A History of the Birds of New Zealand by Walter Lawry Buller. Buller wrote from a desire to record a complete life history of his homeland’s interesting […]
Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s Executive Director and CEO Amada Cruz is understandably proud of the museum’s current exhibition. The Impressionist Revolution: Monet to Matisse traces the origins of the independent artist collective known as the Impressionists via a rich array of paintings, including exquisite examples by very famous artists, including Monet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, […]
Recently Trending
More from Montecito
About 70 art lovers braved the wet weather for the opening of Between Planes: Exploring Sculpture Through Print on Nov. 13 at the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art. The unique show examines prints made by sculptors, offering a glimpse into artistic thought process of an artist prior to creating a sculpture. A highlight of the […]
What a Night! The Santa Barbara Maritime Museum’s halls resounded with laughter with an old-fashioned Celebrity Roast – think Dean Martin! – and a panel of friends and colleagues to celebrate Executive Director Greg Gorga’s retirement after helming the organization for 18 years. Welcomed were over 200 guests (not including crashers) who noshed on delicious […]
The Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art explores artistic vision across two-dimensional and three-dimensional media in Between Planes: Exploring Sculpture Through Print from Nov. 13 to Dec. 20. There will be a free public opening reception on Thursday, Nov. 13, from 4-6 pm at the museum. “A sculpture and a print exist in two different planes; […]
Enlightenment intellectual Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, undertook to describe and classify the royal collections of France and to relate his findings to the broader laws of nature. His book Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux was a landmark in the science of ornithology and helped broaden contemporary interest in natural history. François-Nicolas Martinet engraved the plates […]
Each piece in John Comer’s Across the Channel has a glow… one could call it John’s style and approach to light in plein air, though really it feels more like the embers of his enthusiasm for the islands. The new series, showing at Santa Barbara Fine Art, gathers more than a dozen works painted from […]
This week’s Society Edit is full-on-art! Are you watching Paris Fashion Week’s SS26 and pining for the Impressionism that came out of SS25? Are you recalling Women’s Wear Daily and Artnet presenting Impressionist artists Monet, Manet, Vincent van Gogh, and Pissaro in the couture designer fashion books, and that art literally printed on the fabrics? […]
A few are missing, but this skull has places for 50 teeth: the most of any terrestrial mammal in North America! These abundant and diversely shaped teeth served an adaptable, opportunistic animal: the Virginia Opossum (Didelphis virginiana). First introduced to California in 1910, they are now seen year-round in much of our region. Their abundance […]
Read more...
Chaos meets curation at CAW, as the exhibition Little Shop of Hoarders opens this weekend. The show brings together 10 local assemblage artists whose work will be on view from opening night on September 12 through the 21st. But the first Saturday morning (September 13) is what gives the show its extra oomph, as CAW […]
Behold: an octopus with a shell! Known as an argonaut, this octopus lives in the open ocean rather than on the sea floor. Females build paper-thin shells to protect their eggs. They live in warmer waters to the south. Summertime currents sometimes bring surface-dwelling warm-water species like this up into the transition zone of the […]
Westmont’s talented art faculty, who inspire students to envision exciting, real-world possibilities for their own creative paths, offer an impressive range of works from their innovative careers in Lines of Inquiry: Westmont Art Faculty Exhibition Fall 2025 from Sept. 4-Nov. 1, in the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art. The museum hosts a free, public opening […]
Rare depiction of the extinct Dodo bird by George Edwards, an English naturalist, printed in A Natural History of Uncommon Birds in London, 1757. The Guinea Pig was added purely for scale. George Edwards FRS (3 April 1694 – 23 July 1773) was known as the “father of British ornithology.” This Curator’s Choice image was […]
Twenty-eight fine artists will once again throw open the doors to their home studios over Labor Day Weekend for the Santa Barbara Studio Artists’ 24th annual Open Studios Tour. The tour, a much-anticipated event on the yearly art calendar, allows art lovers across the spectrum to step inside the normally private workspaces, offering visitors a […]
