The Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) presents a free family day in celebration of Día de los Muertos, 1-4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 27, in the museum’s back plaza, Family Resource Center, and galleries, 1130 State St.
For the 30th year, the museum honors the Mexican tradition of remembering the dead with a variety of family festivities that include altar displays, art activities, live music, dance performances, an interactive altar installation designed by the museum’s teaching artists, and traditional Mexican refreshments. Admission to the family event and to the museum is free.
Inspired by Día de los Muertos traditions and works of art currently on view in the museum galleries, the event’s art activities include skull charms, paper flowers, calavera triptychs, still-life mini-altars, and an interactive sugar skull mural.
Visitors can see the new Family Resource Center installation Star Finder Studio inspired by the exhibit The Observable Universe: Visualizing the Cosmos in Art, and create their own version of the phases of the moon with lunar templates on endless scrolls of paper, reimagine mythical constellations on the Star Finder wall, and capture animal or astronaut activity on the interactive planetary surface stations.
Santa Barbara artist Jane Mulfinger, along with volunteers, will be collecting anonymous stories in English and Spanish in response to the question “Where do you belong?” The anonymous survey will help build the text portion of Mulfinger’s West is South exhibit, to be installed at the Atkinson Gallery, and temporary stations around Santa Barbara.
The art of detailed narrative — descriptions of sounds, sights, smells, textures, qualities of light — are aspects that are the foundation for this roving, publicly-sited work.
The Day of the Dead is traditionally celebrated by creating altars or ofrendas (offerings) that include portraits, personal goods, clothing, favorite foods, and possessions of the deceased family member. This is an important social ritual that symbolizes the cycle of life and death that is human existence.
SBMA’s display of altars are created by various partner schools and community organizations, including:
San Marcos High School, Montecito Union School, and La Cuesta Continuation School, and students enrolled in the museum’s free in-school and after-school programs, such as Homework/Artwork After-School Program at Girls, Inc. Carpinteria, Girls, Inc. Santa Barbra and A-OK After-School, and SBMA’s Emerging Teens Program, ArtReach at Canalino School, ArtReach El Camino, Art Reach at Adams School, and SBMA’s Partnership with Knox School.
Each group has incorporated traditional symbols and iconography to offer thanks to departed family, friends, or artists in the museum’s collection.
Free Family Guides are available at the visitor services desks in both English and Spanish.
Free Family Days and all other family programs are made possible through the Schlosser Family Trust, and Connie Frank and Evan C. Thompson. Additional support for Día de los Muertos Free Family Day provided by SBMA Women’s Board, Wells Fargo, and an anonymous donor.
— Katrina Carl for Santa Barbara Museum of Art.