Donald Jeffries Bear: Born on This Day, 1905

Donald Jeffries Bear, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art's founding director from 1940 to 1952, was born on this day, February 5, 1905, in Terre Haute, Indiana.  He previously served as the Director of the Denver Art Museum (1935-1940), regional advisor for the Federal Art Project (1935-38), and as principal of the World's Fair in New York (1938-39). While director of the SBMA, Bear served as president of the Western Association of Art Directors from 1943 to 1946. He was also an art critic and, last but not least, an artist.  

Bear was well travelled, spoke numerous foreign languages, and as a Renaissance man, he was a singular match for another local polymath, Wright S. Ludington. In addition to his duties as director, Bear was also the curator and was responsible for producing over 600 exhibitions during his tenure. The exhibitions were as remarkable for their quality as well as their quantity, including SBMA's inaugural exhibition, Painting Today and Yesterday in the United States (June 5―September 1, 1941), which featured pieces from George Bellows, Mary Cassatt, Robert Harnett, Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Georgia O'Keefe, and numerous others. Perhaps most remarkably, the SBMA displayed two of the most influential paintings of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937) and Marcel Duchamp’s revolutionary Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912) as part of the “Free France” exhibition in 1942. He was also responsible for producing numerous solo artist exhibitions, many of which were the first of their careers, including: William Dole, Clarence Hinkle, Douglass Parshall, Rico Lebrun, Howard Warshaw, Channing Peake, Ansel Adams, Mark Rothko, Antonio Frasconi, Max Weber, Walt Kuhn, June Wayne, and Beatrice Wood.  

On March 16, 1952, to the shock of the arts community, Donald Bear died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 47. The Museum had to recover quickly to maintain the ambitious exhibition schedule that Bear had designed. The 1950s would herald in a new director for the SBMA―one of the first female art directors in the country, Ala Story.

Pictured below: Donald Bear with his wife, Esther Bear, considering Peppino  Mangravite's Ecstasy, during the opening exhibition at the SBMA in 1941

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