Past Exhibitions | Art Museum

2013

2012

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The University Art Museum (UAM) began as an "Art Gallery" established in 1959 as a part of the art department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Its first Director, a member of the art history faculty, was appointed in 1961. The Museum became a separate department within the College of Letters and Science in 1973, with the Director reporting to the College Provost. The first full-time professional museum Director was hired in 1981. The UAM was accredited in 1973 by the AAM and reaccredited in 1988 and 2002. Renamed in 2011, the Art, Design & Architecture Museum has a rich and full exhibition history.

View of Nachman gallery with sculpture on floor and paintings on the walls

Carefree California: Cliff May and the Romance of the Ranch House

February 26 – June 17, 2012

The Art, Design & Architecture Museum presents the first major exhibition based on the work of Cliff May, the designer who popularized the ranch house and made it an icon of casual California living in the post-war era. The exhibition is co-curated by Jocelyn Gibbs, Curator of the AD&A Museum's Architecture and Design Collection, and historian Nicholas Olsberg. The curatorial team includes Christina Chiang, Laura Dizerega, Marta Faust, and Melinda Gandara.

The exhibition and accompanying catalog examine the modernization of the ranch tradition and its transition from regional designs in adobe, brick, tile, and stucco to the modest wood and glass tract house of the forties, to the near-minimal system-built ranches May designed and sold in the late 1950s and, finally, to his luxury ranch houses. Carefree California is based on the Cliff May archive and also draws upon the archives of more than twenty additional California architects, all part of the AD&A Museum's Architecture and Design Collection.

Cliff May - Ranch Rendering

Cliff May Homes, Plans for 1956, perspective, 1956, Rendered by Arthur Lonergan, gouache on board, ink on paper, Architecture and Design Collection

The Carefree California exhibition catalog, published by Rizzoli, is now available for purchase. For more information on the catalog and how to order it, click here.

This exhibition is generously supported by the Getty Foundation, and the Henry Luce Foundation. Additional support comes from ARC (American Reprographics Company), Bank of America, and Gensler. Thanks to the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation for support of the film series produced in conjunction with this exhibition.

Carefree California is part of Pacific Standard Time. This unprecedented collaboration, initiated by the Getty, brings together more than sixty cultural institutions from across Southern California for six months beginning October 2011 to tell the story of the birth of the L.A. art scene.

Catherine Opie Photographs Cliff May

February 26 – June 17, 2012

In conjunction with the exhibition Carefree California: Cliff May and the Romance of the Ranch House, the Art, Design & Architecture Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara has commissioned renowned American artist Catherine Opie to photograph two homes designed by Cliff May as they appear today. Opie’s oeuvre explores the idea of identity through portraits of people situated in particularized landscapes and architectures.

In an exploration of the enduring appeal of May’s designs, fifteen new photographs by Catherine Opie investigate a custom home, May’s Experimental Ranch House, in which he lived for a short time, and a home included in one of May’s large planned communities. Considering May’s themes of the Western mystique, the relationship of interior and exterior space, and the notion of carefree living, Opie’s photographs will lend a contemporary perspective to May’s architecture and its function one half-century after its design. Catherine Opie, Professor of Photography at University of California, Los Angeles, has had her work widely exhibited throughout the United States, Europe and Japan. She was the subject of a mid-career retrospective in September 2009 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York entitled Catherine Opie: American Photographer.

Old Ranch Road #4, 2011, 20 x 26.5 inches, inkjet print. Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles C Catherine Opie

Laurel Beckman: One Minute to Heaven

June 8–July 28, 2012

Opening reception: First Thursday, June 7th, 5-9pm

Laurel Beckman: One Minute to Heaven is presented as part of

ART, DESIGN & ARCHITECTURE MUSEUM @ JANE DEERING GALLERY

128 E. Canon Perdido Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93101

Tuesday-Friday, 11am-5pm

For her latest exhibition, multi-media artist Laurel Beckman has created an installation that alludes to transcendent moments both in the everyday and under extraordinary circumstances. A focal point of the exhibition is a suite of seven new video animations by the artist. Eschewing traditional narrative, each sixty-second vignette takes as its main character an animal or fruit that has been levitated in research labs exploring gravity and resistance. These whimsical characters undergo both comical and harrowing ordeals which point to ideas such as redemption, perfection, and agency.

The animations are offset by writings submitted by invited participants who describe personal, sublime experiences found in public spaces. Gallery visitors are encouraged to include their own writings about such encounters. Digital prints accompany some of the texts, bridging the written experiences with the video creatures.

Beckman is a Professor of Art at UC Santa Barbara. With video/animation and public-space projects in Pittsburgh, New York, San Francisco, New Orleans and Los Angeles, Beckman's exhibitions include those in Istanbul, Berlin, Belgrade, Austin, TX, San Francisco, Palestine, New York, and Los Angeles. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the California Institute of the Arts.

http://www.laurelbeckman.com/

Writers who participated in the project include: Dee Hibbert-Jones, Robert Dansby, Alex Bogdanov, Pat Gomez, Mary Ann Chafin, Samantha Fretwell, Barry Markowitz, Stephanie Washburn, Annetta Kapon, Katy McCarthy, Christine Lorenz , Erik Sultzer, Susan Lakin, Emily Halbardier, Kim Beck, Kate Sorensen, Terri Zitnick, Tracey Morris

Amy Cutler

July 14-September 16, 2012

Opening Reception: Friday, July 13th, 5:30-7:30 pm

Closing Celebration and walkthrough with Amy Cutler: Friday, September 14, 5:30-7:30 pm

The visionary, whimsical work for Brooklyn-based artist Amy Cutler will be featured in a one-person exhibition at the Art, Design & Architecture Museum during the summer of 2012. Cutler is internationally recognized for her works on paper executed in gouache, pen and ink, or graphite. In Cutler's highly engaging compositions, female figures are clothed in exquisitely patterned garments and participate in bizarre tasks which evoke the irrational state of the dream world yet find resonance with quotidian experience. Cutler’s sources are manifold, including 19th century graphic design and book illustration, Persian miniatures, folk art, and Victorian art.

The exhibition travels to AD&A Museum from SITE Santa Fe. Cutler’s work has been featured in one-person exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Museum of Contemporary Art Kansas City, and others. Cutler participated in surveys at MoMA PS 1, the 2004 Whitney Biennial and others. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hammer Museum at UCLA, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Amy Cutler, Courtesy Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York

Bounded Chaos

July 13-September 16, 2012

Bounded Chaos includes contemporary prints, paintings and mixed media works that examine the opposing forces of order and chaos. As a broad inquiry, Bounded Chaos looks at how order may emerge from chaos or vice versa, and demonstrates how new perspectives can be formulated by incorporating either or both in the conception of a work of art.

The exhibition is organized by Julianne P. Gavino, Curatorial Fellow and Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, with assistance from museum interns Samuel Buck, Samantha Coughran, Athena P. Do and Jamie Stoneman

Bounded Chaos installation

STUDENT INITIATED PROJECTS (SIPs) GALLERY

Active Abstractions: Recent Gifts from the Sharon & Terry Bridges Collection

July 14-September 16, 2012

This group exhibition, organized by student curator Jamie Stoneman, samples a selection of recent gifts to the Museum reflecting the collectors’ taste for an international roster of artists working in a variety of mediums. For the Bridges, heartfelt responses to works of art guided their collecting practice making for an eclectic group which reflects their passion for color, line and abstraction.

The Zodiac of Wit: Peter Meller and the Graphic Imagination

A complementary exhibition of Meller’s work will also be on view at the Art, Design & Architecture Museum @ Jane Deering Gallery on view August 3–September 29, 2012 with an opening reception on First Thursday, August 2, 5-8 pm.

July 14-September 16, 2012

Opening Reception: Friday, July 13th, 5:30-7:30 pm

Closing celebration and walkthrough with Amy Cutler: Friday, September 14, 5:30-7:30 pm

Using the simplest materials and techniques such as white-out, pen and ink, hand-carved stamps, markers and a Xerox machine, but in brilliantly imaginative ways, Hungarian-born, UCSB Art History Professor Peter Meller (1923–2008) created an impressive body of drawings and prints. Many of his designs reflect his training as a Classics scholar and feature traditional themes updated with comical, ironic, or poignant references to contemporary life. Sophisticated yet accessible, Meller’s work speaks to the full range of human experience - the passions of love, the pain of loss, the pleasures of life.

Ruinophilia: Images of Destruction and Decay From the AD&A Museum’s Collection

ART, DESIGN & ARCHITECTURE MUSEUM @ JANE DEERING GALLERY

128 E. Canon Perdido Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93101

Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Friday, 11am-5pm

October 5–December 16, 2012

Ruinophilia, a companion exhibition of works from the museum's permanent collection that depict images of destruction and decay, will be at the museum's space at the Jane Deering Gallery. Curated by student interns, Mariel Lacson '14 and Jamie Stoneman '13, Ruinophilia explores artists’ continued fascination with ruins from the 16th century to the present. Through prints, photographs, sculpture and multimedia works, Ruinophilia ranges from depictions of crumbling buildings to bodies that display the infirmity of age. These works express a longing for the past, or an obsession with the passage of time.

photograph of skulls and crosses inside a convent

Artist unknown, Capuchin Convent Rome, 1882, albumen print, gift of Dr. Corlette Rossiter.

The Stumbling Present: Ruins in Contemporary Art

October 13, 2012 – January 20, 2013

The Stumbling Present: Ruins in Contemporary Art features an international roster of artists who use the imagery of neglected or willfully destroyed places and objects to address socio-political concerns and the failure of utopian ideals. For many of these artists, ruins register as symbols of loss but also as sites of possibility upon which they can impose their own potent narratives. The included films, paintings, photographs, and sculptures are part of the long trajectory of ruins in art as signifiers of transience but they also reveal pressing concerns affecting contemporary artists and the state of our world today.

Participating artists: Lara Almarcegui, Carlos Bunga, Nigel Cooke, Adam Cvijanovic, Carlos Garaicoa, Simryn Gill, Valerie Hegarty, Kristen Morgin, Melanie Smith, Rob Voerman

This exhibition has been organized by Elyse A. Gonzales, curator of exhibitions. It is made possible by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; The Ceil & Michael E. Pulitzer Foundation, Inc.; Marcia and John Mike Cohen; The Mondriaan Fund, Amsterdam; and The Netherlands-America Foundation.

logo for the Mondriaan Fund

logo of the Netherland-America Foundation, Inc.

Painting of ruins and smoke from a wood building

Rob Voerman, Pressure, 2012. Silkscreen, pencil, and soot on paper, 3 ft. 10 ½ in. x 6 ft. 6 in.; ed. 7/8 + 1 AP, Courtesy of the artist and C24 Gallery, New York

Figure in Flux: Selected Gifts From the Drs. J.W. and Sue Colin Collection

STUDENT INITIATED PROJECTS (SIPS) GALLERY

October 13, 2012–January 20, 2013

The Colin Collection witnesses a lifelong love of both the spiritual dimension underpinning art and the adventure of collecting. This selection focuses on the various ways artists have rendered the human figure from realistic to abstract depictions.

This exhibition has been curated by Maeve Coudrelle, Art History and Political Science ‘11.

Fritz Scholder, Self Portrait, 1992, lithograph, 30 x 22 in., Gift of Drs. J.W. and Sue Colin

Mind/Map/Los Angeles: The Laurence Rickels Collection

February 16 - March 10, 2013

Mind/Map/Los Angeles is a visual accounting of the history of the Los Angeles art scene in the 1990s and 2000s as assembled by UCSB Professor, Laurence Rickels. This installation takes as its focus artists whose works dovetailed with Rickels’ own scholarship and interest in Freudianism, especially as it relates to memory, mourning and melancholia. The collection was given by Rickels in 2011/2012 and the exhibition is organized by Katrine Bruun Jørgensen, graduate art history exchange student from University of Copenhagen.

depiction of house under construction with wood structure

Liam Jones, Construction #25, 2003; acrylic on canvas; 12 x 24 in.; Gift of Laurence A. Rickels

Walter S. White (1917-2002): A First Glimpse of the Archive

February 16 - March 31, 2013

A selection of drawings of Walter S. White’s work in the Coachella Valley put together by students in a graduate seminar of Prof. Volker M. Welter. The seminar is conducting preparatory research for a larger exhibition on the architect which will be at the Art, Design & Architecture Museum.

photograph of a White-designed house and a portrait of White

Gas Station DeSign: A Tour Through the Collection

February 16 - May 12, 2013

Gas Station DeSign surveys the architecture of gas stations from the widespread popularity of the automobile in the 1930s to the height of twentieth-century car culture in the mid-1960s. The exhibition includes photographs and drawings of gas stations from the museum’s Architecture and Design Collection. This visual tour emphasizes the pivotal and contested role of signs used for advertising. This exhibition is organized by Christina Chiang, the Assistant Curator of the Architecture and Design Collection. Companion exhibitions are on display in Cheadle Hall, second floor and the Arts Library entry.

The exhibition at the Arts Library displays pages from two photography books about gasoline stations. Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1962) by pop artist Ed Ruscha is considered to be one of the major early influences on the emerging artists' book culture. His photographs of gas stations along iconic Route 66 between Oklahoma City and Los Angeles depict an era and culture devoted to the automobile. Thirty years later, artist Jeff Brouws exploed the fate of similar gas stations in his Twentysix Abandoned Gasoline Stations (1992), a respectful riff on Ruscha's work and a poignant commentary on the vanishing independent gas station in America. This companion exhibition was organized by Christina Chiang with the assistance of undergraduate intern Tara Kopp '13, who organized the display in Cheadle Hall.

drawing by Kem Weber of a Union Minute Man Station with two canopy wings

Kem Weber, Union Minute Man Service, Union oil station, 1945-1947, Architecture and Design Collection.

The exhibition is supported by Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, in memory of Reuben Katz, who was the owner/operator of "Commercial Super Service" truck terminal, Los Angeles.

Fame and the Mundane: Andy Warhol’s Photography

February 16 – May 12, 2013

Examining the photographs Warhol took of celebrities and the affluent, as well as candid snapshots of the everyday, this exhibition presents two distinct aspects of Warhol’s photographic practice. This collection of photos was given by the Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. It has been organized by art history undergraduate Breanne Lewis ‘13.

Art on the Table: Food and Drink from the Permanent Collection

February 16–May 12, 2013

Art-making, eating and drinking: all fill basic human needs. This exhibition explores the diversity of approaches artists and craftsmen have taken to celebrating these essentials. Assembled from the permanent collection, the exhibition looks at a wide range of cultures and materials. It also highlights the theme of the All Gaucho Reunion Weekend, “Savor UCSB.”

Irma Cavat; The Japanese Basket, 2000; oil on canvas; 60 x 60 in.; The Cavat Family (Irma, Karina and Nika)

The Arts of Precolumbian and Spanish Colonial America

April 12 - May 12, 2013

This exhibition focuses on the seminar and survey classes taught by Jeanette Peterson, Ph.D. of the History of Art and Architecture department at UCSB. On the Matter of the Sacred: from “idols” to saints in the Americas will explore the role of sacred images and how they functioned in Spanish Colonial America of Mexico and South America. Students in the survey class, The Arts of Precolumbian America, will be required to identify objects within their cultural context.