Half the story is the schools
Brooks, UCSB and a small college gallery that punches above its enrolment.
Brooks trained photographers until the market it trained them for closed
The Brooks Institute taught commercial and industrial photography here for decades and shut in 2016, after the industry that hired its graduates had already changed.
A university museum sits above a lagoon
UCSB's Art, Design and Architecture Museum holds architectural drawings alongside its art collection, which makes it unusual for a campus museum.
A small college gallery that punches above the enrolment
Westmont's Ridley-Tree House Museum programmes work that would sit comfortably in a much larger institution.
Before the quake, painters came for the light
Plein-air work on the coast, and the collectors who followed it.
Thirteen seconds in June, and a style that became compulsory
The 1925 earthquake, the Architectural Board of Review, and what got rebuilt.
A town of ninety thousand kept a kunsthalle
The Contemporary Arts Forum in Paseo Nuevo, 1976 to 2013.
The Forum closed and the thread was picked up
MCASB, and the galleries that grew near the tracks.
The coast and what was painted on it
Chumash rock art, and a potter in the next valley.