NEW LOOK of Art Events

My art lover clients feel lonely. They long for the ole ‘wine and cheese’ opportunity to socialize in front of artwork with strangers at a favorite gallery. Collectors and art fans are sick of admiring work online or attending ZOOM lectures about art. They want to see, touch things, talk about them, drill down dealers, wear clothes, and feel uplifted from their devices. Public and private spaces for art blur as we rediscover that our weather is perfect for art anywhere.

My predictions for the NEW LOOK of Art Events include:

1. LOCAL is the new GLOBAL
2. The environment (and our world outside) MATTERS
3. The social aspect of art is now a treasured RITUAL
4. Cross cultural and cross boundary categories of art and events, public and private, is a new SYNTHESIS
5. What we have learned from using our ‘devices’ aids us to look more widely at art, but our focus is on REAL ART in our communities
6. We rediscover what we love about our local art institutions, and support what they DO

Proving the MAIN new trend, LOCAL INDEED IS THE NEW GLOBAL, Santa Barbara Museum of Art opened mid-August after a six year $50M renovation. To become more ‘locally focused’ they made their extensive collection of over 25,000 objects more accessible, but global in presentation and curatorial choices. SBMA Chief Curator and Deputy Director Eik Kahng conceived the cross-genre, cross-theme, cross-era installation for the central museum entry, Ludington Court. Here the Roman marble Lansdowne Hermes perches on a six-foot pedestal. He looks around at American and European paintings 17-20TH century, from the permanent collection, high up on the walls. He casts his eyes down on African, Pre-Columbian antiquities, and fabulous decorative art.

New Museum a Major Treat

Recently Katrina Carl, Director of Public Relations at SBMA, gave me a personal tour, along with photographer John Flandrick. I found the NEW museum a major treat. They take appointments online to limit entry to a safe number of guests each hour. DO take a look at the refreshing new layout, the new galleries, the lighting and flooring, the refreshing colors of the new walls. Of course don’t forget Curator Susan Tai‘s re-conceptualized hanging of works long familiar locally. Then take a look at the forward leaning art, which lovers of contemporary work will find mind-blowing, set off in newly created spaces, curated by James Glisson.

They thought through every detail, from the architecture to the floor plans and new stairways, to the method of presentation of the art. This is something to celebrate. The emphasis on outreach, hands and eyes on art for guests, is manifested in a new workshop space. Visitors watch through a glassed in studio where art restoration, research, treatment, and methods of preservation take place. This lets guests see HOW MUCH WORK goes on behind the clean presentation of art at a museum. Real life curatorship for us all, refocusing on what is precious in our community.

Which leads me to another prediction:

These coming months in the art world will be about the region and the environment with contemporary art as the main genre. Art may come in the form of multimedia and include design, fashion, sound, more of performance in some cases, or at least a “show” in the presentation. Digital screens are here to stay. Now we know what they did for us in the Pandemic, making the world smaller. But we will treasure in-person communication ABOUT the work, actually ‘being there’ and seeing work in person, with friends.

We’re also ready for new events AROUND art. To that end I again congratulate SBMA’s new galleries. In a number of the new spaces we locals re-discover why we love living here. For example, Julie Joyce, former curator at SBMA, during the renovation, curated new acquisitions of Southern California Contemporary Artists in two new galleries. You should see what Julie chose! Regional images are treasured! Where the museum once had an attic, we now see a gorgeous skylit gallery devoted to global contemporary art. Another new gallery is devoted to photography, AND a gallery for new media work, hung by Charles Wylie, Curator of Photography and New Media.

The huge impact of the Asian Galleries, always a strength of our museum, counterbalances the contemporary at the renovated SBMA. Plus a new exhibit, Fire, Metal, Monument: Bronze, shows the antiquity of bronze through the millennia. The old and the new, the mixing of all forms, media, genres, celebrating the pleasure of LOOKING in person!

And I mentioned art will be talked about and celebrated OUTSIDE. Here again, SBMA plans to create an outdoor roof top garden. We look forward to these themes with delectation!