‘Second Song,’ 1943, is a surrealist oil on canvas by artist Kay Sage. (SBMA, Gift of Estate of Kay Sage Tanguy)
‘Second Song,’ 1943, is a surrealistic oil on canvas by artist Kay Sage. (SBMA, Gift of Estate of Kay Sage Tanguy)

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) will host Modern Life: A Global Artworld, 1850-1950, a long-term exhibition of the museum’s renowned permanent collection.

Combining artists from Europe, South America and North America, the display illustrates the parallels between modern art and modern life, and how art broke through national, geographic and linguistic barriers.

More than 80 paintings, sculptures, photographs and prints from the collection and selected loans on view reflect global shifts in science, technology, politics, and popular culture.

“This exhibition considers how artists in SBMA’s collection confronted, avoided, celebrated and criticized the transformations of the tumultuous century between 1850 and 1950,” SBMA said.

To make sense of these currents of change, the exhibition has sections, including “Abstraction,” “Global Surrealism,” “Art, Science, Technology,” and “Landscape.”

Modern Life also contains rotating selections from the museum’s more than 8,000 photographs and 2,800 caricatural prints. An illustrated timeline wall highlights SBMA’s 80-year history.

As such, SBMA said: “The display is a window into the museum’s past, a snapshot of its broad collection, and a history of the world we live in today with its linked global economies and instantaneous communication.”

Modern Life is presented in English and Spanish. SBMA welcomes Santa Barbara, Ventura, and San Luis Obispo county for free admission and programming every second Sunday of the month.