September 10, 2022 - April 3, 2023

Second Floor Valley Oak Gallery

Traverse the sand dunes with Central Coast photographer Bob Canepa in the Wildling Museum’s new Valley Oak Gallery exhibition, Dunes: Visions of Light, Sand & Shadow, on view September 10, 2022 - April 3, 2023.

The unique terrain of the Oceano Dunes, also referred to as the Pismo Beach Sand Dunes, has served as a wealth of inspiration for Canepa, who has visited these dunes weekly for years. From sweeping vistas of light and shadow to grains of sand caught in dewy moisture, Canepa has surveyed these weather-sculpted dunes from a range of perspectives, always finding something new in the shifting landscape.

April 2022 - February 2023

Michele Kuelbs Tower Gallery

The Wildling Museum is pleased to announce its new Michele Kuelbs Tower Gallery installation, Portals & Pathways by Santa Barbara-based artist Kerrie Smith, on view April 2022 through February 2023.

Smith’s multisensory installation features flowing banners printed with Smith’s vivid abstract paintings inspired by daily walks along Santa Barbara’s More Mesa, interspersed with hand-stamped poetry and nature photography. Smith will continue to update the gallery with the changing seasons, transforming the space throughout 2022-2023 as part of the Wildling Museum’s inaugural artist-in-residence program for the Michele Kuelbs Tower Gallery.

April 9 - September 26, 2022

First Floor Main Gallery

The Wildling Museum is pleased to announce Fire & Ice: Our Changing Landscape, on view April 9 - September 26, 2022, featuring a wide diversity of artwork, including video installations, photography, paintings, mixed media, and more, illustrating aspects of fire and ice.

While aesthetically appealing, these dramatic visuals also invite conversations about how increasingly frequent and severe fires are altering our landscape, particularly in the Western United States. Equally concerning is the retreat of glaciers and shrinking snowpack, and warming permafrost in our colder climes. Also included in the exhibition is “Letters to the Future,” an on-site installation by artist Xavier Cortada of the University of Miami, which invites visitors to write down their own efforts to help mitigate climate change.

June 30 - September 4, 2022

Second Floor Valley Oak Gallery

The Wildling Museum is excited to be exhibiting a selection of climate and community-focused works from Corazón del Pueblo, a cultural and creative arts center based in the Santa Maria Valley.

​These works were created in 2021 as part of a collaboration with the Santa Maria Joint Union High School District. Corazón del Pueblo worked with Ethnic & Gender Studies (EGS) teachers to develop and implement a rigorous art project involving students from Santa Maria, Pioneer Valley, and Ernest Righetti High Schools.

March 4 - September 4, 2022

Second Floor Valley Oak Gallery

The Wildling Museum’s focus is to inspire a conservation ethic by bringing art and nature together through our collection and exhibitions. While the Wildling’s permanent collection includes 145 pieces, the artworks highlighted in Recent Acquisitions represent the newest additions to the collection, all acquired in the last five years. Collectively, they highlight our institution’s efforts to represent art or artists of our region, as well as broader California and its environment.

October 9, 2021 - February 28, 2022

Second Floor Valley Oak Gallery

The Wildling Museum is pleased to announce its upcoming Valley Oak Gallery exhibition, Close to Home, Three Printmakers, featuring artists Claudia Borfiga, Karen Schroeder, and Sara Woodburn, on view October 9, 2021 - February 28, 2022.

The works of Borfiga, Schroeder, and Woodburn center on a recurring theme of nature as a place of solace and beauty where growth and change can seem intimate or expansive. Layers of color, pattern, and printmaking are the dialogue these artists use to share stories of Earth. They value natural areas and seek to bring inspiration to the viewer.

September 25, 2021 - January 17, 2022

Third Floor George & Barbara Goodall Education Center

The Wildling is pleased to host the Sewjourners, a satellite collective of the Coastal Quilters Guild in the Barbara Goodall Education Center from September 25, 2021 - January 17, 2022. This community exhibition marks the Museum’s first textile-focused exhibition and is inspired by the artists’ various interpretations of trees, translating a range of species, textures, and seasonal transitions through the quilt medium.

Many of the quilts on view are also for sale through the Wildling Museum store.

May 14 - December 31, 2021

Online Student Exhibition in Collaboration with Solvang School

School field trips were put on pause over the last year, but the Wildling Museum was able to partner with Solvang School to bring art and nature to the virtual classroom. The partnership culminated in a new online student exhibition, Solvang School: Bird Studies, on view online May 14 - December 31, 2021.

Wildling Museum Executive Director Stacey Otte-Demangate worked with educator Erin Dunkle and middle school students enrolled in Solvang School’s Art and Science elective class to explore birding and the art of John James Audubon.

April 17 - September 5, 2021

First Floor Main Gallery

Artists are observers and interpreters of what they see around them, whether it is a social concern, the natural world, the built environment or their own unique vision. Often artists work in series, exploring a particular topic as they deeply observe their subject over time. For artists, this repetition can serve both as a meditative practice and a means of learning and understanding.

In this exhibition, artists were chosen who create work in series, examining some aspect of nature. They may be examining patterns in nature or the same location over a long period of time. Some combine and recombine singular elements that accumulate into a fascinating and revealing artwork or body of work.

These artists have transformed their fascination with deep observations of their individual environments into works that help us to see the beauty in the details of our world, celebrating both quiet and dramatic moments in nature.

January 2021 - March 2022

Michele Kuelbs Tower Gallery

The Wildling Museum of Art and Nature is kicking off 2021 with an invitation for the public to experience art from the outside-in during its ongoing public closure due to state and local Covid-19 public health mandates for indoor museums.

In the museum’s new Michele Kuelbs Tower Gallery installation, Holli Harmon: The Nature of Clouds, artist Holli Harmon’s immersive work centers around a Norfolk Island Pine tree floating beneath bright blue, cumulus cloud-filled skies. Large chandelier crystals hang suspended by invisible thread from ceiling to floor in a brilliant rain shower as plants are suspended throughout at varying heights.

November 7, 2020 - February 14, 2021

Second Floor Valley Oak Gallery

Wildling Museum of Art and Nature will mark its 20th anniversary with a special exhibition celebrating the Museum’s 20-year history in the Santa Ynez Valley. 20/20: A Retrospective will showcase 20 works spanning two decades of exhibitions representing one work for each year of the Wildling Museum’s history.

September 1, 2020 - January 10, 2021

Juried Online Exhibition & Competition

The Wildling Museum of Art and Nature is pleased to present its 11th nature photography competition. Our 2020 competition highlights the native critters that call the Tri-County region home.

Winners from both the adult and youth categories will be displayed in an online exhibition through January 10, 2021.

August 25, 2020 - February 7, 2021

Juried Online Exhibition in Collaboration with Allan Hancock College

The Wildling Museum is delighted to collaborate with Allan Hancock College this summer featuring highlights from adult education instructor Michael Messina’s photography class. The students’ photography was first intended to be a Barbara Goodall Education Center exhibition, but with the intrusion of Covid-19, it has now evolved into an online Wildling exhibition.

Over the course of the spring semester, Messina’s class persevered online, adapting to Zoom and learning new skills and methods as they completed their course while navigating the pandemic, culminating in this virtual exhibition documenting various scenes of nature and wildlife captured as close as the students’ own backyards, as far as Africa, and as deep as beneath the ocean’s surface.

April 4 - December 31, 2020

Tower Gallery & Online Exhibition

Opening concurrently with 20/20: A Retrospective, is the Wildling Museum’s inaugural Tower Gallery exhibition featuring Remembering Bud Bottoms: A Legacy of Art and Activism. The exhibit features sea life sculpture works by the Santa Barbara artist locally-renowned for his iconic Dolphin Family sculpture installed at the base of Stearns Wharf in downtown Santa Barbara.

February 1, 2020 - January 31, 2021

First Floor Main Gallery

The expanse of the open night sky has served as source of wonder for artists, poets, and scientists across cultures and millennia. Join us in celebrating the awe-inspiring beauty and mystery of the night across a range of media, including nocturne painting and photography, as well as poetry by Dan Gerber.

February 6 - May 31, 2020

Third Floor Barbara Goodall Education Center

Inspired in Nature, features photography by 29 Solvang School Yearbook and Media students. The students, grades 7 – 8, were inspired by American transcendentalist writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau’s quote: “All good things are wild and free.” Students turned their lenses to nature, many finding inspiration in their own backyard with subjects ranging from pets and family members, to local landscapes and sunsets captured in both color and black and white.

October 9, 2019 - January 13, 2020

Barbara Goodall Education Center, Third Floor

The Wildling Museum is pleased to announce Santa Barbara Printmakers: Wild Places in Print, a new Barbara Goodall Education Center exhibition featuring nature and wildlife-inspired works by the Santa Barbara Printmakers (SBP) group.

Soaring birds, colorful layered foliage, a delicate barn owl, coastal vistas, and bold graphic butterflies are among nearly 100 different prints on view.