Over the next eight months, Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s exhibition program invites visitors to look more closely at how images shape perception, memory and meaning. From Latin American photography and immersive video to experimental photographs and Mary Cassatt’s tactile works on paper, these exhibitions explore the ways artists transform observation into something more layered, mysterious and revealing.
EXHIBITION OPENINGS
For Your Reference: Mungo Thomson
May 17 – Oct. 25, 2026 | Colefax Gallery
This exhibition presents three films by Mungo Thomson that animate ordinary reference books into expansive meditations on knowledge, time, and perception.
Combining humor and philosophical inquiry, Mungo Thomson (b. 1969) mines archives and cheap, mass-produced books to create immersive video installations. SBMA presents three films containing images scanned from birdwatching field guides, history textbooks, and a handbook for mimes.
Perceptual Shifts: Photographs from the Collection
June 28 – Sept. 20, 2026 | Photography Gallery
Bringing together works that blur the line between observation and illusion, this exhibition explores how photography can complicate rather than clarify the act of seeing.
This exhibition brings together photographs that make the familiar feel strange, unstable, or newly vivid. Through extreme detail, unconventional focus, and experimental techniques, the artists represented in the exhibition transform everyday sites, national parks, and constructed environments into images that question the presumed clarity and truthfulness of photography.
Cassatt and Friends
Sept. 20, 2026 – Jan. 3, 2027 | Von Romberg and Emmons Galleries
Centered on a rare counterproof by Mary Cassatt, this exhibition explores the tactile relationship between drawing and printmaking in the work of Cassatt and her contemporaries.
Though Mary Cassatt is best known for her paintings, she was also a printmaker, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art is proud to have in its collection a number of Cassatt’s printed works. Among these works is a unique type of print called a counterproof, produced by dampening a pastel drawing and pressing it on to another piece of paper, allowing the transfer of pigment to create a mirror image. The resulting print, Simone in a White Bonnet Seated with Clasped Hands (No.1) is the core of a fall 2026 show that explores the intimate relationship between drawing and printmaking among Cassatt and her contemporaries. The techniques used in these artists’ works often hinge on the tactile; the evidence of the artist’s hand is undeniably present, a refreshing contrast to more polished mass-produced printed material of the same period.
Stage Craft: Pictorialist Photography and Performance
Oct. 11, 2026 – Jan. 31, 2027 | Ala Story and Photography Galleries
This exhibition considers Pictorialism as a meeting point between photography and performance, where the studio, the stage, the city, and the natural world became settings for poetic visual drama.
In the early 20th century, the Pictorialists challenged the idea that a photograph’s primary function was documentary; their goal was to elevate photography as a unique art form. To achieve this aim, they often created sets and employed human models to compose scenes, as if staging a play. This produced collaborative relationships with dancers, actors, and filmmakers. When Pictorialists left their studios, nature and the city became other sites for dramas. They used innovative printing and editing techniques such as soft focus and shadow to evoke the pastoral, the poetic, and later, the abstract. This exhibition shows how Pictorialist photographers combined historical art and modern modes of dance, acting, stage-craft, storytelling, and even early cinematography.
CONTINUING EXHIBITIONS
Magical Realism: Latin American Photographers in Dialogue
Through June 14, 2026 | Eichheim Gallery
Magical realism is a literary genre popularized by Latin American writers such as Gabriel García Márquez and Isabel Allende. It understands the spiritual and material worlds as intertwined rather than opposed, drawing from Indigenous traditions and beliefs as well as the legacies of Spanish literature. The presence of spirits and prophecy is ordinary. Bodies, objects, or places can suddenly transform into something else entirely.
Photographers often share a similar outlook. Through attention to coincidence, pattern, and symbolic presence, ordinary moments can become charged with new meaning. This exhibition creates a dialogue between important Latin American photographs in SBMA’s permanent collection and select prints which further explore the literary and the fantastical.
Remixed: Entwined Histories and New Forms
Through Aug. 30, 2026 | Von Romberg and Emmons Galleries
This exhibition highlights artists who reinvent quilts, textiles, and hybrid materials. Drawing on embedded histories while reshaping them for the present, these works function like visual remixes—layered, improvisational, and deeply connected. Artists such as Wendy Red Star, Basil Kincaid, Porfirio Gutierrez, Adia Millet, Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola, and Michael C. Thorpe demonstrate how materials carry memory even as they are transformed into new forms.
A Few of Our Favorite Things: Staff Selections from the Permanent Collection
Through Sept. 6, 2026 | Loeb Family Gallery
This exhibition turns to the Museum’s own community. Chosen by SBMA staff from across departments, these works highlight the breadth of the collection and the insight of the individuals who care for it, offering an intimate and celebratory portrait of the Museum in the present.
RANDOM-ACCESS MEMORY: Internet Art
Through Sept. 13, 2026 | Photography Gallery
In this exhibition, the digital realm becomes a mutable archive. Mining online spaces for images and data, artists like Zhanyi Chen, Claire Hentschker, and Andrew Norman Wilson reveal the Internet as a living memory system that blends personal and collective histories while continually reshaping both.
As if in a Dream: History, Fantasy, Future
Through Jan. 3, 2027 | McCormick and Davidson Galleries
This exhibition explores how artists merge memory with imagination. Landscapes rooted in personal associations, uncanny figures, and visionary still lifes show how fleeting experiences are transformed into inventive new worlds. Featuring works by Alice Baber, Dominic Chambers, Eduardo Chavez, Rafael Coronel, Odilon Redon, Max Hooper Schneider, and others, the exhibition reveals the fluid line between what we remember and what we dream.
About SBMA
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art is a dynamic cultural institution dedicated to integrating art into everyday life. Through internationally recognized exhibitions, thoughtful stewardship of a distinguished permanent collection, and immersive arts learning experiences for all ages, SBMA connects historic and contemporary perspectives in meaningful ways. We foster curiosity, dialogue, and creative exploration, serving as a welcoming civic space where art enriches individual lives and strengthens our community.
Location: 1130 State St., Santa Barbara.
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m. | Free 1st Thursdays, 5–8 PM
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