Last month, the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCASB) unceremoniously closed permanently, with limited communication to its community via publicly accessible channels. The museum’s imminent closure was shared with its email subscribers in July, and in August the museum’s website was updated to reflect the closure as well. The closure came as a surprise, after the museum’s 47 years in the Santa Barbara, CA community (“An Announcement to Our Community”). Citing “financial strain,” the museum was not able to sustain itself, especially during the pandemic (Hayden and Woodard). An exploration of the museum’s inability to fully connect with a philanthropic community helps explain its shutdown. While the museum worked to actively improve its relationship with young professionals, its programming did not resonate with its surrounding wealthier community, which is especially important in the Santa Barbara arts scene that is rife with philanthropic opportunity.
Santa Barbara is a small, tight-knit community, and there is a very visible love of the arts within that community. Between Santa Barbara and neighboring Montecito, there is no shortage of wealth – in addition to MCASB, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum, and many other arts and cultural organizations compete for philanthropic resources. Yet in addition to that community of wealth, Santa Barbara is also home to a community of teens, college students, and young professionals. As a “non-traditional” arts institution, MCASB struggled to connect with its community until 2018, when it began purposefully appealing to Santa Barbara’s younger audiences with targeted programming and membership opportunities.
By appealing to this younger generation, MCASB filled a gap within the Santa Barbara community, but perhaps disserviced itself by neglecting more monied audiences who could contribute to the museum’s financial viability. Perhaps the institution also fell victim to donor fatigue; with so many institutions competing for ultimately limited resources, established philanthropists may have been unwilling to shift their support from their chosen, proven institutions to a smaller institution with a more tumultuous track record of audience engagement.
Although the museum was establishing itself as a beloved institution among younger audiences, those audiences did not have the financial ability to support the museum in the way it needed. While the museum is permanently closed, I hope its legacy of making art accessible to younger audiences lives on in other institutions that have taken the helm of some of MCASB’s offerings. Perhaps the museum’s closure will serve as a lesson on the importance of engaging audiences that reflect a community’s wide range of members, welcoming both younger museum-goers who can shape the museum’s future and the older, wealthier audiences who can financially support that future.
Works Cited
“An Announcement to Our Community.” Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, https://mailchi.mp/mcasantabarbara/mcasb-may-2019-newsletter-24388. Accessed 11 Sept 2022.
Hayden, Tyler and Josef Woodard. “Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara Announces August Closure.” Santa Barbara Independent, 13 July 2022, https://www.independent.com/2022/07/13/museum-of-contemporary-art-santa-barbara-announces-august-closure/. Accessed 11 Sept 2022.
Originally written September 2022.
Art with an Opinion 