Photo Credit:Farshid Assassi, 2000

The University Art Museum (UAM) is located 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles, on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Established in 1959, as a gallery dedicated to art education at UC Santa Barbara, it now serves as a unique educational resource for academic and community audiences throughout the region. Today, the UAM has a distinguished Fine Art Collection of over 8,500 works and over 750,000 architectural drawings, historic photographs, writings, scrapbooks, and three-dimensional objects in the Architecture and Design Collection. The Museum has earned an international reputation over the last 30 years for its innovative and culturally diverse exhibitions, catalogues, and interdisciplinary programs.

Mission Statement:
The mission of the University Art Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is to serve as a unique educational resource for the various audiences of the university and the community through the collection, preservation, and interpretation of works of art, architecture, and design. By presenting innovative, challenging, and culturally diverse exhibitions, producing catalogues and other publications, and organizing interdisciplinary programs on issues of historical, social, and cultural relevance, the UAM seeks to promote scholarship, inspire creative excellence, and deepen an understanding of the visual arts produced by the world’s peoples, past and present.