The Art, Design and Architecture Museum (branded as AD&A Museum) is a museum within the University of California, Santa Barbara, located in Santa Barbara County, California, United States.
Built in 1959, the facility was originally a gallery for art education at the university.UAM Website Faculty member and architectural historian David Gebhard served as its director for twenty years. It was formally accredited by the American Alliance of Museums in 1977. Today the AD&A contains a fine art collection of over 8,500 original works.
Reflecting its name, the museum often highlights the intersections between art, design, and architecture.
Collection Other than the original works, the AD&A also possesses over two million architectural drawings, historic photographs, writings, scrapbooks, and three-dimensional objects in the Architecture and Design Collection. From its inception, the museum was one of few institutions collecting architectural design materials, and today holds significant collections that include the papers of Rudolph Schindler, Irving Gill, Lutah Maria Riggs, Steven Erlich, Barton Myers, and George Washington Smith. Today, the museum states that it is "one of the largest architectural archives in North America."
The museum's digital collections were enhanced with online exhibitions during the COVID-19 crisis so that audiences could continue to enjoy its resources during the health quarantine.
Artists and Exhibitions
Early Exhibitions In 1959, the museum's inaugural exhibition featured the German painter and sculptor Max Beckmann. Beckmann was a longtime friend with his main patron, the German-American collector and writer Stephan Lackner. Lackner had moved to Santa Barbara in the early 1940s and began facilitating exhibitions based on his collection of Beckmann's works as early as 1955, including at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
Exhibitions during the 1960s A majority of the exhibitions in the 1960s featured painting work, including from painter-sculptor Rico LeBrun, Howard Warshaw, and William Merritt Chase. Josef Albers painted but also worked with glass and furniture design. The exhibition of work by Kem Weber represents the major architectural offering to audiences during this decade.
Exhibitions during the 1970s
Charles Demuth: A Retrospective Los Angeles in the 1930s Robert Rauschenberg Robert Smithson
Exhibitions during the 1980s The AD&A featured several notable painters in the 1980s, including Reginald Marsh, Alex Katz, and a combined exhibition with Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg. The exhibition schedule also highlighted the museum's broader identity by showing work from architect R.M. Schindler, ancient three-dimensional metalwork in the form of Etruscan Bronzes, and the street photography of Gary Winogrand.
Exhibitions during the 1990s The exhibitions of the 1990s reflects attention to this era's focus on multiculturalism. It featured works that addressed issues of race in the work of Glenn Ligon, and gender and sexuality from Kiki Smith. The museum highlighted its first artist from Asia, showing pop culture sculpture work from Kenji Yanobe. The AD&A also hosted examples of storytelling quilt work from activist-artist Faith Ringgold. Another exhibition continued the threads of design and architecture with a showing of materials from Michael Graves.
Exhibitions during the 2000s The museum's exhibitions during the 2000s strayed from single artist features and focused on themes and concepts. Outside of the exhibition of designer Paul Tuttle, the most significant showings offered titles such as Contemporary Art from Cuba, Buddhist Perspectives in Contemporary Art, Qing Dynasty Couplets from the Lechangzai Xuan Collection, and New London Architecture (titled "Gritty Brits").
Exhibitions during the 2010s Amy Cutler - contemporary American painter and illustrator (Jul 14-Sep 16, 2012) Francisco Goya - Spanish romantic painter and printmaker (Sep 13-Dec 22, 2013) Andy Warhol - American photographer and filmmaker (Feb 16-May 12, 2013) Michael Westmore - American film industry makeup artist (Jan 14-April 30, 2017) Chiura Obata - Japanese American painter and teacher (Jan 13-Apr 29, 2018) Firooz Zahedi - Iranian American photographer (Jul 14-Sep 2, 2018) Ja’Tovia Gary - American filmmaker (Jul 14-Sep 2, 2018) Julius Shulman - American architectural photographer (Jan 12-Apr 28, 2019) John Sonsini - American oil painter (Jan 12-Apr 28, 2019) Carl Jung - Swiss psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and psychologist (Jan 12-Apr 28, 2019) Lee Mullican - American painter, curator, and art teacher (Jul 13-Sep 1, 2019) Ila Bêka - contemporary Italian artist, filmmaker and producer (Sep 28-Dec 8, 2019) Louise Lemoine - French video artist and filmmaker (Sep 28-Dec 8, 2019) J.R. Davidson - American architect (Sep 28-Dec 8, 2019) Cliff May – part of Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA, 1945–1980 Alice Aycock Irving J Gill Anna Halprin, Simone Forti, and Yvonne Rainer
Exhibitions during the 2020s Harmonia Rosales - Cuban-Jamaican-Jewish American painter (Jan 19-May 1, 2022) Ishi Glinksy - Tohono O’odham and German artist of Indigenous craft and contemporary art (Sep 1, 2022-Jan 22, 2023) Sandy Rodriguez - American interdisciplinary artist (Feb 25, 2023 Mar 3, 2024) Keith Puccinelli - American artist of drawing, sculpture, and interactive installation (Sep 7-Dec 16, 2024) Tomiyama Taeko - Japanese visual artist and writer (Jan 18-Apr 28, 2025) Jackie Amézquita - Guatemalan American performance artist (Aug 26-Nov 29, 2026) Bonnie Ora Sherk - American landscape-space, performance artist, and educator (Aug 26-Nov 29, 2026) Tiffany Chung - Vietnamese American contemporary cartography and installation artist (Jan 17-Apr 26, 2026)
See also List of design museums
References
External links
Art, Design & Architecture Museum - official site