The Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) Women’s Board will host its fundraising event Art à la Carte as a lecture series, March 25 and April 29.

Each evening includes a cocktail hour, live music, three-course dinner with wine and dessert prepared by executive chef David Rosner, and a presentation by the featured speaker at the University Club of Santa Barbara.

Funds raised help the museum bring world-class exhibits, and creative educational programming to Santa Barbara.

At the March 25 event — Baghdad to Louisville: Vian Sora in Conversation with James Glisson — artist Sora and Glisson, SBMA curator of contemporary art, will discuss her artwork and her turn in 2017 to the abstract painting for which she has become well known.

Sora grew up in Baghdad, Iraq, in a family of art dealers and auctioneers at the center of the Iraqi art world, but then lived through two American invasions and the insurgency.

While her colorful paintings are ultimately life affirming and even joyous, they also contain fragments of the artist’s difficult experiences, as well as her adjustment to life in the U.S., where she has lived since 2006.

Sora will have a mid-career exhibit organized by SBMA working in collaboration with the Speed Museum and the Asia Society Texas in July 2025.
 

The SBMA program on Monday, April 29 will address The Future of the Past: Scientific Study of Artworks for Collectors, Museums, and the Art Market with Jennifer L. Mass.

News articles often frame the scientific study of artworks as a recent phenomenon, highlighting the latest discoveries about paintings by famous artists whose works command the highest values at auction, SBMA said.

Scientists are often called in to provide attribution data on a major item that recently sold for a fabulous price. However, this work is also part of a long chain full of discoveries that have provided a greater understanding about the creation and preservation of some of the world’s icon artworks by painters such as Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Edvard Munch, and Paul Cézanne.

Mass, the president/founder of Scientific Analysis of Fine Art, LLC, a scientific consulting firm for cultural heritage based in New York City, will discuss discoveries about each of these painters, including the secrets behind their paintings’ luminosity and enduring beauty.

Tickets to each event are $450 per person. For more information and tickets, email Karen Kawaguchi at kkawaguchi@sbma.net or visit sbmawb.org.