Sata Barbara Art Museum Open Saturday 81719 Lady Ridley Tree Gallery

On August fourteen, the Santa Barbara Museum of Fine art welcomed members and VIPs to a Reopening Preview 24-hour interval. More than 800 people came out to explore the museum subsequently a six-year renovation projection. Smiles, looks of awe, and congratulatory remarks were pervasive.

The ongoing Capital Campaign is simply $400,000 shy of its $fifty million goal, which is designed to cover not merely the costs of Phases 1 and ii, which were just completed at an undisclosed cost, but pregnant future work as well.

With staggered inflow times over the seven-hr event, guests were able to easily explore their treasured museum while keeping socially distant from ane some other. The public was welcomed the following day, with staggered arrivals, to a Free Community Twenty-four hour period, complete with live music and fine art-making activities. More than one,000 guests turned out for this as exciting solar day.

During the six-year renovation, the 109-year-old building was seismically retrofitted; its security, storage, and climate-control systems were overhauled; a new art-receiving facility with expanded capacity was congenital; and galleries were redesigned. There are new dedicated spaces for contemporary fine art, photography, and new media. About eighty percent of the toll went to infrastructure. The renovation was led by Santa Barbara–based Kupiec Architects PC and executed by Santa Maria–based Diani Building Corporation.

A larger number of pieces can at present exist displayed because of an additional 1,000 foursquare feet of gallery space and because of several significant layout changes. The museum at present has 21,000 square feet of gallery space and 67,100 square feet overall. For much of the renovation period, the museum managed to keep about ane-3rd of the gallery open to the public.

With the massive federal aid programs made necessary past the pandemic, large dollar figures can lose their significance. Still, $50 million is an extraordinarily big sum to raise for a museum in a relatively small city like Santa Barbara, especially during the time of the Thomas Fire, i/nine Debris Flow, and pandemic, yet the 8-yr capital campaign has virtually succeeded.

From the start, the board was committed to raising the entire corporeality needed and so future trustees would not be saddled with any debt. Electric current and former museum trustees hugely stepped upwardly for the campaign, contributing a whopping lx percentage of the funds raised. Moreover, Campaign Committee Co-Chairs Joan Davidson and Marshall Milligan led by case with generous donations.

The largest donation, $v+ million, came from the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Foundation. Diane Cunningham and Lady Leslie Ridley-Tree both contributed in excess of $4 million. All are longtime contributors.

The future phases, notwithstanding in the planning stages, include new galleries for Asian art, a new roof terrace garden and pavilion, and renovations to the auditorium, Museum Store, Museum Café, and a couple of galleries and wings. The $fifty one thousand thousand also funds an $8 meg Facility Maintenance & Capital letter Expenditures Fund.

The museum, with 25,000 works of fine art, has impressive collections of 19th- and 20th-century American and European art, Asian art, contemporary American painting, and photography. Information technology offers extensive educational programming for youth and adults. Reservations are recommended.

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