The Art of Ancient Glass: The Richard and Lois Gunther Collection

October 15, 2005 – January 2, 2006

The Art of Ancient Glass: The Richard and Lois Gunther Collection   represents an extraordinary exhibition of ancient Mediterranean glass vessels dating from the 6^th century B.C.E. to the 11^th century C.E.  These works of art provide captivating insight into the transformation of glassware from a luxury item to a familiar household commodity.  The exhibition, organized by Consulting Curator Rainer Mack, includes jewel-like bottles for perfume, cosmetic containers, and oil flasks, as well as examples of drinking cups and bowls.  The colors of glass, both opaque and transparent, add to the brilliance of the pieces, and their small size and intricate technique are testaments to the skills of ancient artisans.

Due to its comprehensive representation, the exhibition offers examples of a wide range of glassmaking techniques, from core-formed to free-blown glass.

The earliest pieces, such as the alabastron and the oinochoe pictured above, are prime examples of the core-formed technique, first introduced in the Near East and Egypt around 1500 BCE.   In this technique, the core shape of the object is sculpted out of clay or mud and then dipped into molten glass.  After trails of other colors are added for decoration, the core is then removed, leaving a hollow vessel.  Core-formed glass production was very expensive and laborious, making glassware limited and exclusive to a luxury market.  Archaeological finds of glass from this period are fairly rare, indicating that glass was not an ordinary commodity. 

In the third century BCE, mosaic glasswork made its debut.   Likely the most popular manifestation of this technique was millefiori, or “a thousand flowers” in Italian.  In this process, fused bundles of glass rods or various colors and sizes were cut into cross sections resembling flowers.  These tiles were then arranged, fired and slumped over a mold when still hot to form bowls and other vessels. 

During the late first century BCE, the technical innovation of glass blowing emerged among the glassmaking industries of the Near East and Egypt.   This technique was significantly more efficient than core-forming, casting, and molding glass vessels.  The mass production of glass vessels became possible as glassmakers sought to meet the demands of the new market represented by the expanding Roman Empire.

Examples of two glass-blowing techniques are represented in The Art of Ancient Glass exhibition.  Most common, and a technique still used today, is the free-blown technique.  A tube is twisted to retrieve a gob (“gather”) of molten glass and air is blown into the tube, forming the initial shape of the vessel.  The object is further shaped by rolling, pinching, or folding to achieve the desired form and texture.  With the mold-blown technique, the glassblower inflates the gather of molten glass into a pre-formed, ceramic mold.  The mold gives the resulting vessel its shape, as well as relief decoration on the exterior surface. 

The proliferation of blown glass resulted in the greater integration of glass into Roman daily life.  Though tableware was the most common use of glass, many of the containers in The Art of Ancient Glass exhibition are perfume bottles or cosmetic vessels.  In the ancient world, perfumes and other cosmetics were oil-based and not alcohol-based, as is the case today.  Clay jars were not ideal containers because they allowed absorption of the precious oils into the vessels’ walls.  Glass containers were superior in function as their surfaces resisted absorption.  This quality made them ideal for medicinal preparations, often consisting of oils, spices, and herbs, as well.

More than 150 individual works were donated to the Museum in 2003 by Richard and Lois Gunther, who initiated their collection by purchasing the first piece in 1967 for a mere $25 as a keepsake when traveling through the Middle East.  Working with dealers from around the world, the Gunthers continued to accumulate objects until a contact in the Middle East suggested that the collection be donated to an institution that focused on antiquities.  The Santa Barbara Museum of Art was one of the first on the list.  The collection was donated to SBMA, significantly increasing the breadth of the Museum’s antiquities.

This exhibition has been made possible by the generous support of The Schultz Foundation in memory of George L. Schultz.

Portraits of Place

October 8, 2005 - January 2, 2006

In celebration of Brooks Institute of Photography's alumni who have distinguished themselves in the world of fine art photography, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art presents Portraits of Place.   This exhibition features the work of Bob Werling, Chris Rainier, Dan Burkholder, Scott McClaine, Christopher Broughton, and Rolfe Horn, and traces a photographic evolution from traditional to contemporary visions of landscape.  While all six graduates earned a diploma from Brooks, this collection illustrates their present geographic and stylistic diversity. 

When the Santa Barbara Museum of Art opened its doors in 1941, fine art photography was already an integral part of the exhibition program.   Solo exhibitions of work by photographers such as Edward Weston, Wynn Bullock, Frederic Sommer, and Ansel Adams were presented in the late 1940s and early 1950s.  Together, the two institutions - the Brooks Institute of Photography, founded in 1945 by Ernest Brooks, Sr., and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art - established the reputation of Santa Barbara as a photographic town, though their goals and purposes remained, as they still do, distinctly separate.

The exhibition marks the first time that a concentration of local graduates has been featured at SBMA.  While their educational background acts as a natural “golden thread” for the exhibition, the individual accomplishments of each photographer lends further significance.  Bob Werling, one of the earliest featured graduates, was born in  San Francisco, California in 1946.  He obtained  Bachelor of Arts and Honorary Master of Science degrees from Brooks Institute of Photography, and to this day, resides in Santa Barbara.  He studied privately under Ansel Adams from 1966 to 1970 and with Imogen Cunningham from 1969 to 1975.  It was through Cunningham’s introduction that Werling landed his “first real” job, photographing plants at every University of California campus for the Berkeleybotanist, Professor Mai Arbegast.

Adams’ early influence is evident in Werling’s sense of style and composition, especially with his most noted subject matter, sand dunes.   Through this affiliation with Adams, Werling also came to know other important photographers.  Brett Weston and Imogen Cunningham became close friends and mentors to the young artist. Marion Post Wolcott, relying on his darkroom expertise, entrusted her negatives to his printing genius.  

Others featured in Portraits of Place have also helped lay the groundwork for the future of photographic technique.  Dan Burkholder was one of the first photographic artists to embrace digital technology in the early 1990s.   He was born in Hagerstown, Maryland and received his BA and Masters Degrees in Photography from Brooks Institute of Photography in 1991.  True to his love of the traditional photograph, Burkholder uses digital technology to build images that still look and feel like traditional photographs through the delicate platinum printing process.  Originating the digital-negative process in 1992, Burkholder has opened doors for those photographers interested in moving into the new digital technologies without sacrificing the depth of traditional wet process printing. 

This exhibition has been sponsored, in part, by Brooks Institute of Photography.

First Seen: Portraits of the World's Peoples (1840-1880)

August 13, 2005 - January 8, 2006

Click here for First Seen Multimedia and Educational Programming

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) showcases the exhibition First Seen: Portraits of the World’s Peoples (1840-1880), an exhibition of early photographs organized by SBMA, which opened to great acclaim at New York’s Dahesh Museum earlier this year.

First Seen offers an extraordinary survey of nineteenth-century images, many of them unique, made in roughly the first four decades following the invention of photography. Comprised of nearly 250 photographs produced by gifted amateurs and commissioned professionals and by visiting and indigenous photographers, the exhibition highlights the first-known photographs of peoples and races, classes and ranks on nearly every continent. It is a map of the human world in the middle of the nineteenth century in all its dazzling variety and complexity.

The earliest pictures in the exhibition are daguerreotypes. These include a Jules Itier photograph of a group of Ceylonese standing by the shore in Ceylon, and a photograph of an aborigine in the South Pacific by an unidentified daguerreotypist. Both are the earliest photographic images of people in the region. A Native American warrior had his photograph made in Washington D.C.; on opposing leaves in a velvet-lined ambrotype case, he’s shown first in his own ceremonial regalia and then in the ceremonial regalia of Washington—a frock coat and tie. Not only portraits of this man at a particular moment, the images may also be seen to carry a whole history of acculturation and cultural resistance that would play out over the next century. The Scottish team Hill and Adamson photographed the fisher folk of Newhaven in 1844, perhaps the earliest project to document a community and a way of life.

The exhibition includes extremely rare salted paper prints from paper negatives made by Ernest Benecke in Egypt. His photographs of Nubian slaves and children and Bedouin tribesmen are the earliest photographs of the different peoples living along the Nile. Roger Fenton accompanied the British military campaign in the Crimea and photographed the people he encountered—the combatants, military allies and camp workers. Felix Beato sailed with the first American expeditionary force to Korea. The exhibition also includes work from an album of beautiful, classically composed photographs that were the first glimpse the West had of Korean soldiers and ministers. When the Czar consolidated Russia’s hold on Central Asia, an unknown photographer made pictures of his newest subjects in present-day Kazakhstan. The photographs are bound in a sumptuous album, sealed with the Romanov crest.

Photographers observed not only the obvious physical differences between white Europeans and the peoples of Asia, Africa, Australia and the Americas, they also carefully recorded the social gradations within groups. At almost the same time that an unidentified photographer recorded the Czar’s new Asian subjects, R. Fhedorovetz, who styled himself photographer to the Emperor of All Russia, documented the different ethnic and social types in Odessa—a Jewish schoolboy, a Cossack, an elderly Slavic rag picker. His project prefigures that of August Sander’s attempt to record The Face of Our Time in Germany in the 1930s. Photographers active in Japan, India and other parts of Asia carefully recorded the status of their sitters, while photographers in Europe turned their cameras on elements of their own social structure: the picturesque vagabond, the privileged innocence of childhood, the secular and the religious, the intellectual and the working man.

The mix of curiosity and scientific study can be seen in the early efforts at anthropological study by amateurs such as William Ellis, a physician who made three visits to Malagasy in the mid-1850s and carefully photographed inhabitants in profile and front view to graphically represent characteristic skull shapes. Scientific curiosity was not only directed outward from the Euro-American center. In England, Zabe made photographic portraits of asylum inmates with careful notation of their illness and symptoms; he also photographed criminals and measured their features to arrive at an index of criminality.

Although in many cases the photographs in this exhibition are the first portraits of people from a region or group, this exhibition is not a monotonous rank of head-and-shoulder mug shots. The peoples of Europe, North and South America, China and the South Pacific, as well as the Middle East and Africa, are represented at work, in their environments, in their homes and in their celebrations. Organized by geographic groups, the 250 intimate photographs reveal the common threads of human societies and human curiosity. The specificity of photography counters the catalogue of human characteristics with the distinctly unique and individual aspects of each sitter.

Drawn largely from the Wilson Centre for Photography, Ltd. in London, the exhibition is co-curated by SBMA Curator of Photography Karen Sinsheimer and independent scholar Kathleen Stewart Howe, and is accompanied by a major publication with an essay by Ms. Howe.

This exhibition is made possible through the generous support of the Wallis Foundation, Eric Skipsey, The Dana and Albert R. Broccoli Foundation, Amanda and Jim McIntyre, Santa Barbara Bank & Trust, PhotoFutures, Kathleen Barrows, and Margaret and Howard Arvey.

A Tribute to Paul Mills: A Life in Art Remembered

July 16 – October 2, 2005

From 1970 to 1982 Paul Mills led the Santa Barbara Museum of Art during a period of dramatic growth of collections, programs and gifts.  Now, nearly a year after his passing, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art pays tribute to its former Director through an exhibition that honors and celebrates his life in art.

While Mills’ influence is felt throughout the entire Museum today, the exhibition highlights key works added during his tenure.  The selection includes David Park’s Three Women, donated in honor of Paul Mills at the time of his appointment as Director.  Also featured are works that Mills helped acquire for the Museum, including Christo’s The Pont Neuf, Wrapped (Project for Paris) in 1980, Miss Diamonds, Bar de la Lune, Montmartre by Hungarian photographer Brassaï, and Dancing Krishna, a thirteenth-century South Indian sculpture.  Also on view is The Buffalo Hunter.  Mills’ essay about this early American painting, written in 1973, is being reprinted in conjunction with the exhibition.

Mills’ twelve-year leadership of the Museum resulted in major institutional achievements, including the addition of the Alice Keck Park Wing completed in 1983.   A flag designer and enthusiast, he spearheaded the well-known Santa Barbara Flag Project.  He also directed a major American Revolution Bicentennial flag history and design exhibition, New Glory, presented in conjunction with the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Parks Service, the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition program and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. 

Active in Spanish and U.S. museum projects, Mills worked toward the exhibition of Spanish culture at the time of the settlement of California, The Age of Carlos III.  In addition, he received recognition for his ongoing international efforts and numerous visits to Spain and Mexico, including an audience with King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia at Blair House, Washington.  In 1978, he was awarded Bolsa de viaje under Article IV of the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between Spain and the United States, to negotiate terms of a proposed cooperative research project solicited jointly by (and later awarded to) the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and Museo del Prado.

Mills’ professional involvement in the art community extended far beyond the Museum walls.  He acted as Secretary and Trustee of the Association of Art Museum Directors, and Commissioner for the County of Santa Barbara Art Commission, and sat on boards of various local and regional organizations.

Recently found were some of Mills’ hand-written notes in response to a series of interview questions.  The final question asked, “What is the value of having a permanent collection?”  Mills’ answer summarizes his entire philosophy - a passion for both the care of art and ability to make art accessible to the public.

This exhibition has been made possible by the Museum Collectors Council. The reprinting of the publication, The Buffalo Hunter, has been made possible by the Mills Family, Mrs. William Dole, Mercedes H. Eichholz, Jean and Howard Fenton, Penny and Joseph Knowles, Professor Alfred Moir, Shelley and Max Ruston, Carol L. Valentine, and the WTF Fund. 

Garbo's Garbos

June 4 - August 21, 2005

 

World Premier Unveiling of Hollywood Glamour in Santa Barbara

“The cinema has given precisely one great artist to the world: Greta Garbo…unless you also count that damn mouse.” - Louis B. Mayer

On view for the first time, Garbo’s Garbos features 90 vintage photographs from the movie legend’s private collection. Organized by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the exhibition showcases the career of film star Greta Garbo in the centennial year of her birth.

Portraits taken by the great Hollywood and New York photographers – Arnold Genthe, Edward Steichen, George Hurrell and Clarence Bull, among others – are included in the exhibition. The imagery was originally created to promote the major productions and stars of the golden age of Hollywood. Today, such a collection acts as a testimonial to the seductive power of the photographic image and provides a glimpse into the life of the alluring, and sometimes illusive, Greta Garbo.

“Few other collections possess such a rich trove of original photographs,” comments guest-curator, Robert Dance, who also co-curated the recent Santa Barbara Museum of Art exhibition, Ruth Harriet Louise and Hollywood Glamour Photography. “These photographs have attained historical significance by continuing to promote the Garbo name and face to new generations who have never viewed her films. Garbo recognized the importance of these photographs and carefully saved them for her family.”

A lavishly produced book, produced by Rizzoli in four languages, accompanies the exhibition, with contributions by Dance and Scott Reisfield, Greta Garbo’s grand-nephew. The publication includes eighty full-page photographs of Garbo that document her twenty-six American and two European films, and her evolution as both an actress and icon of beauty and style.

Reisfield, who has catalogued Garbo’s unique and extraordinary collection, contributes the introductory essay to the book.

This exhibition has been made possible through the generous support of Northern Trust, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art Women’s Board, The Kingsley Foundation, Eric Skipsey, and Marie L. Morrisroe.

An Enduring Vision: 17th to 20th Century Japanese Painting from the Gitter-Yelen Collection

April 9 - July 17, 2005

An Enduring Vision:  17^th-  to 20^th-Century Japanese Art from the Gitter-Yelen Collection presents a major survey of Japanese paintings from six dominant schools that emerged and flourished during the Edo period (1615-1868) and continued well into the twentieth century. Selected from the Gitter-Yelen collection, internationally recognized as one of the finest private holdings of Japanese painting in the West and hailed by the New York Times as an “outstanding collection,” the exhibition features approximately 100 paintings by master painters whose innovative styles revolutionized the traditions of Japanese painting and established the foundations of early modern practices such as naturalism, realism, and individual expression. To complement the exhibition, SBMA will present Edo:  The City and its Diversions  - Japanese Woodblock Prints from the Permanent Collection.

An Enduring Vision: 17th- to 20th-Century Japanese Art from the Gitter-Yelen Collection has been organized by the New Orleans Museum of Art; its presentation in Santa Barbara made possible through the generous support of Peggy Maximus, The Lehrer Family Foundation, Susie and Hubert Vos, Melissa and Trevor Fetter, Margaret and Howard Arvey, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art Friends of Asian Art.

Ines Roberts: Interpretations of Isabelle Greene's Landscapes

January 29 - May 8, 2005

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) presents the exhibition Ines Roberts: Interpretations of Isabelle Greene’s Landscapes, on view through through May 8, 2005.  The SBMA commissioned local artist Ines Roberts to create a photographic interpretation of gardens designed by the world-renowned landscape architect Isabelle Greene. The illuminated installation showcases 160 images of five distinctive Greene gardens and is part of a collaborative exploration between the University Art Museum at UCSB and the SBMA.    

These exciting exhibitions at the University Art Museum and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art are the first major examinations of Isabelle Greene’s career and methodology. Her pioneering work has, since the mid-1960s, helped focus attention on the need for environmentally sensitive and sustainable landscape design. The exhibitions and their related programs are planned to coincide with National Landscape Architecture Week – held every year in mid-April – which annually draws visitors from across the country to Southern California and Santa Barbara.

The granddaughter of Henry Mather Greene, partner in the noted turn-of-the-century Pasadena arts-and-crafts architectural firm Greene and Greene, Isabelle Greene trained as a botanist and artist before going on to become a licensed landscape architect.  While Greene has designed gardens across the country, a significant number are located on the Central Coast of California.  Greene’s earliest designs in Santa Barbara — her first project was completed in 1964 — combined drought-tolerant native plant materials with a keen sensitivity to Southern California’s microenvironments, particularly those in its coastal areas. 

Roberts, who has the rare distinction of being both an associate of the Royal Photographic Society and a member of the London Salon of Photography, photographed Greene’s gardens during various seasons and times of day over the past four years. Through this intensive process, Roberts managed to capture the distinctive atmosphere and unique character of each place. Her interpretations range from representation to abstraction, as she sought to translate her own impressions of the complex relationships and the underlying themes that distinguish Greene’s landscapes.

Roberts began her visual journey of Greene’s landscapes in 2000, arranging visits to each garden, often for several hours at a time to explore the varied landscapes.  Roberts notes, “Visiting five gardens over a period of four years, I expected a repetition of layout and similar impressions. So it filled me with admiration when I discovered that each garden was different. They are designed to respect not only the owner’s personality and wishes, but also to incorporate the atmosphere of the surrounding landscape.”

SBMA’s Curator of Photography Karen Sinsheimer, who commissioned Roberts, said, “Ines Roberts’ approach to subject matter has been honed over time.  Whether photographing household items, man-made structures, or the pristine landscape, she seeks to reveal other realities, to uncover unseen connections, to discover hidden truths.”

To celebrate Greene’s 40-year career, the University Art Museum’s exhibition (on view March 30 – May 15) will examine 10 of her most significant landscapes by displaying a variety of materials from Greene’s design archives, including sketches, drawings, photographs, and art work, and a video exploration of the Lovelace garden, one of her most elaborate local designs. 

Through The Green Fuse: Photographs by Robert Buelteman

January 29, 2005 - May 8, 2005

Docent Tours: May 4, 7, 8 at noon.

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) presents Through the Green Fuse: Photographs by Robert Buelteman,   on view January 29 through May 8, 2005.The exhibition is the inaugural presentation of the complete portfolio of Robert Buelteman’s revealing and otherworldly floral images. In the 25 large-scale botanical portraits, Buelteman uses an innovative technique that creates a vibrant blue aura within and around the images. The portfolio, now part of the SBMA’s distinguished permanent collection of photography, is the gift of Sonja and Bill Davidow.

Robert Buelteman was an established nature photographer who began experimenting with a new photographic technique that would lead to the most striking and surprising work of his career. His technique is a deceptively simple return to the most basic photogram, in which objects are placed on photographic paper and exposed to light. Rather than merely arranging flowers on light-sensitive film and exposing them to sun, Buelteman explored a far more technically demanding process. The floral subject is initially exposed using high frequency, high voltage electricity. Then, in a process the artist compares to Japanese ink brush painting and improvisational jazz, Buelteman uses a variety of light sources to hand-paint the subject. In addition to xenon-strobe and tungsten lights, he makes extensive use of fiber optics, allowing him to control the delivery of light much as a painter controls a brush. The resulting image is not created by reflected light; the image records energy and light as filtered directly through the plant structure. 

The images of plants vary in shape and color, from earthly and simplistic to dazzling and complex forms of nature, symbolizing life and growth. “Through the Green Fuse is a portfolio of images that I created as an interpretation and celebration of the design of being, and through them, to enhance my understanding of its nature,” said Buelteman. “The imagery succeeds when I reach a point where my conscious intention dissipates, and…is replaced by a sense of being a conduit for the serendipitous dance I’ve imagined between subject and spirit.”  

Karen Sinsheimer, SBMA Curator of Photography, said, “This stunning group of photographs becomes a commanding presence when viewed in totality. Every stem and flower seem alive with energy, sparkling with neon outlines.  Beautiful and provocative, these images redefine nature photography. We are grateful to the Davidows for this important gift which enhances our photography collection, and we’re delighted to share this extraordinary body of work with the public.”

This exhibition has been generously supported, in part, by the Museum Collectors Council.

Artful Giving: The Wallis Foundation

February 12 - April 24, 2005

Docent Tours: February 5, 6, 10, 12, 16, 18, 20, 26 at noon. March 2, 4, 6, 12, 15, 17, 20, 23, 26, 29 at noon. April 1, 6, 7, 10, 15, 19, 21, 24, 28 at noon.

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) presents a two-part exhibition Artful Giving: The Wallis Foundation, with Part 1 on view January 29 through May 8, and Part 11 to follow on July 31 through October 2. Artful Giving: The Wallis Foundation celebrates the extraordinary generosity over the past 15 years of The Wallis Foundation in two distinct exhibitions.  

For more than a decade, the Wallis Foundation has been instrumental in shaping the programs at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art by generously supporting acquisitions and sponsoring major exhibitions.  To celebrate 15 years of Artful Giving, the Museum will present a selection of acquisitions made with Wallis Foundation funds in two separate exhibitions.

The Wallis Foundation’s support has allowed curators the freedom to purchase key works in several collection areas, including Asian, European, and Photographic.  At the same time, the foundation made it possible for the SBMA to bring two very important exhibitions to the West Coast:  Jewel Rivers:  Japanese Art from The Burke Collection and Desire and Devotion:  Art from India, Nepal, and Tibet in the John and Berthe Ford Collection, an exhibition organized by the Walters Museum.

The first exhibition honoring the Wallis Foundation gifts showcases an eclectic selection of works that represent the areas in which the Foundation has helped to enhance the permanent collection.  Art from disparate cultures and media, including a Japanese hanging scroll, dating to 1809, copper engravings by the Englishman William Blake made in the early 19^th century and photographs from both the 19^th and 20^th centuries exemplify the many contributions to the collection made possible by the Foundation.  Artful Giving honors not only The Wallis Foundation, but all those whose generosity has built the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and its collections.

Part II of Artful Giving, scheduled for July 31 through October 2, will present additional examples of twentieth century purchases, from Arnold Genthe to Edward Steichen, and include works by contemporary photographers Paul Caponigro, Larry Sultan, and Tomoko Sawada.