Museums - Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History

The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History was founded 1916 and opened at its present location near the Santa Barbara Mission in 1923. Several exhibit wings were added to the Spanish Colonial Revival–style building in the 1920s and ‘30s. A state-of-the-art Collections and Research Center, housing departments of Anthropology, Vertebrate and Invertebrate Zoology, and Earth Sciences, opened in 1991.
Materials from indigenous cultures are housed in the Anthropology Department. More than 5,000 ethnographic artifacts represent over 500 Native cultures with primary emphasis on western North America, which encompasses California, the Southwest, the Northwest Coast, the Western Arctic, and the Great Plains. Africa, Oceania, and Mesoamerica are represented by small numbers of objects. Nearly all the ethnographic artifacts in the museum’s collection have been donated by individuals including early collectors such as philanthropist Max Fleischmann, noted artist Fernand Lungren, and Mr. & Mrs. Philip B. Stewart. The Plains Indian collection features a Cheyenne painted buckskin coat, c. 1870, which is decorated with pictographic scenes depicting Cheyennes raiding a Crow camp to obtain horses. Another pictographic panel, painted on muslin c. 1890 by a Hunkpapa Sioux artist, portrays scenes from a historic 1869 battle called ”Killed 30 Crows.” Other highlights of the museum’s collection include more than 1,000 baskets made by Native peoples throughout western North America; many Northwest Coast wood carvings; textiles of the Southwest, Mexico and Central America; and featherwork of South American tropical forest peoples.
Archaeological collections include approximately 75,000 specimens from 200 sites around the Santa Barbara area and the Northern Channel Islands of California, representing all major periods of prehistory.
Most of the museum’s exhibition space is dedicated to permanent exhibits focused on the natural history of the Santa Barbara region. One gallery, the Chumash Indian Hall, is permanently dedicated to exhibiting the material culture of this local Indian group, for which the museum houses one of the world’s largest collections of artifacts. It includes the world’s foremost collection of rare Chumash basketry and fiberwork, consisting of forty-five ethnographic pieces and some 100 archaeological specimens. A fine basket by Juana Basilia, c. 1815, features designs from Spanish colonial coins and words of dedication woven at over 200 stitches per square inch. Museum anthropologists work closely with the Chumash community to present and interpret the material.
Collections not on display are housed in the Collections and Research Center, where they are accessible by appointment with curators. The museum’s 40,000-volume reference library is another valuable resource for researchers.