Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s New Art Learning Lab Expands Education Space

Planned Sale of McCormick House Helps Fund Light-Filled ‘Permeable Membrane’ with State Street

A docent led tour at SBMA, where the new Art Learning Lab will bring education programs closed to the Museum. | Photo: Courtesy

The new Art Learning Lab at Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) opened last weekend with a whole slew of activities for both children and adults to enjoy. Taking over the former museum gift shop (which is moving into a smaller space near the museum entrance) and former restaurant space, as well as the Family Resource Center area, the new expanded space for hands-on art and instruction is part of an effort to more fully integrate the children’s programs and all-age education programs with the SBMA and art itself.

“We’re driving people into this museum space. And so, for education programs, the kids are here. They’re right in contact with the artwork, all of that,” said Eichholz Family Foundation Director Amada Cruz. Cruz and her team, including Chief Curator James Glisson and longtime Director of Education Patsy Hicks, recently met with the Independent to go over some of the museum’s long-term plans.

Part of the impetus for moving the educational programs into this part of the museum site was to “right-size” the gift shop, which had been losing money for a long time, said Cruz, who came to SBMA in October of 2023 to replace retiring Executive Director Larry J. Feinberg. In addition, Cruz explained, “The board, and this actually predates me, the board decided that they were going to sell the McCormick House [home of the Ridley-Tree Education Center on Santa Barbara, where summer camps and other programs took place]. We looked at it when I first got here and realized that it needed a lot of repairs. We had to actually close it down last year for a certain amount of time because we had to do some mold remediation. So once that happened, we did a much more in-depth assessment of the building. We realized this was really going to be an expensive endeavor to bring it up to current code. And then at that point, the decision was we’re either going to invest in programs and people, or we’re going to invest in this building. And we made the decision that, and this was really mostly led by the board, that it’s really more important to invest in our people, in our programs, because old houses are really hard to maintain, and the cost is just going to continue to go up and up.”

“The difficult decision was made following months of thoughtful research and discussion,” said SBMA Board Chair Michael Linn in a statement. “It is the fiscally responsible decision to place the McCormick House on the real estate market over the next six months and to use the proceeds to establish a new SBMA Education Fund allowing us to continue to offer an extensive slate of mission-centric programs at the Museum and in the community.”

Hands-on art making will be visible from State Street with Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s new Art Learning Lab. | Photo: Courtesy

The new Art Learning Lab increases the museum’s educational space and will strengthen the connection between art making and the museum’s galleries, fostering inspiration through direct engagement with original works of art, explained Hicks.

“This move is very consistent in terms of what we actually value in this institution,” said Cruz. “Programs, education, outreach. So, at the same time that we are driving kids and programs here, right, right where the art is on all this, we are also expanding the community outreach that Patsy and her incredible team do, which is incredible and super robust. So, it’s really about investing in our core values.”

SBMA educational programs, family workshops and art making activities taking place in the new Art Learning Lab. | Photo: Dalmiro Quiroga

“Now we’re gonna be able to run upstairs and sketch. We’re gonna be able to meet different people. Curators will pop in, the director will pop in, the security guards. It’s gonna just create a sense of museum as part of their community in a much more profound way,” shared Hicks. “Our teaching artists, and there’s seven of them (four full-time) will be using this area for prep and storage and making prototypes,” she explained. “It’s also great, because kids will see other adults creating. So, there’s that kind of feed back and forth.”

Both Hicks and Glisson also expressed excitement about people walking by on State Street being able to look through the windows and see what’s going on. “It’s just such a friendly thing. So, what you’re looking at here is through the window, through the store window, which has been for the last several years, a really important way for us to be that sort of permeable membrane with State Street,” said Glisson.

“But now it’s going to be even more that way, because this whole space will be dedicated to that. So, there’ll be lots of space for student artwork, for showing the kinds of classes that we’re doing, different community groups that we’re working with. And then, just to reiterate what Amada said, this is something that we’ve always done,” said Hicks. “This is the mission statement of the Education Department, that integrating art into the life of the community is essentially our task. And so that remains the same and actually deeper than ever, I think, because of the fact that we’re here, and in the process of doing this, we have an image of Leslie Ridley-Tree and also Katharine Dexter McCormick, because we understand the incredible legacy and the priority of education that they felt. Everything that we do is carrying on that legacy without abandoning it in any way, and we’re absolutely true to the spirit. I think both of them would feel good about what we’re doing.”

For updates on the museum’s educational programs, see sbma.net.