The living art of Chumash basketry, a tradition with deep roots in the Santa Barbara region, is the focus of a new exhibit, opening today, Jan. 25, at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History (SBMNH), 2559 Puesta del Sol.

For thousands of years, baskets played essential roles in all aspects of traditional Chumash life. Modern Chumash weavers carry on those traditions, creating baskets entirely by hand and teaching their children, according to SBMNH.

The museum’s Chumash Basketry: Art & Life display spotlights the connections between those living traditions and the natural world, in the first comprehensive exhibition featuring the world’s largest collection of Chumash baskets. The only previous major showing of Chumash basketry was in 1964 at UCSB.

The new exhibit demonstrates the creative variety of uses and designs in traditional basketry, from technological marvels like the tightly woven baskets for storing water and cooking, to baskets as art.

Select modern works by contemporary Chumash weavers, including Samantha Sandoval and Susanne Hammel-Sawyer, put the abundant historic examples in the context of continuing traditions, and the words of Chumash elders and weavers are interspersed throughout the exhibit, expressing the personal significance, joys, and challenges of basketry, SBMNH said.

“Baskets are more than beautiful objects,” said Jan Timbrook, curator emeritus of ethnography. “They offer a window into Native peoples’ partnership with the natural world, their deep knowledge, their everyday life, beliefs, creativity, history, and resilience.

“It has been my extraordinary privilege to have cared for and learned from these uniquely special cultural icons for more than 50 years, and to be able to share this knowledge with the wider world.”

Using specific native plants that are managed, harvested and prepared for weaving, Chumash weavers promote conservation and respect for the environment.

Museum visitors can read about the plants and learn to recognize them, deepening the sense of connection between landscape and culture. The ethnobotanical information in the new basketry exhibit complements SBMNH’s permanent living exhibits in the Sukinanik’oy Garden of Chumash Plants.

The new display was organized by Timbrook, who has long worked in close collaboration with Native communities.

The author of “Chumash Ethnobotany: Plant Knowledge Among the Chumash People of Southern California,” her expertise in anthropology, botany and art has long served the museum’s work to educate and inspire.

For more about the exhibit, there will be a free talk by Timbrook, 7:30 p.m. Feb. 3 in Fleischmann Auditorium, presented by the Santa Barbara County Archaeological Society. For details, visit sbnature.org.