Proscenium: Elliott Hundley
Lights up! Proscenium: Elliott Hundley, a mid-career solo exhibition, sets the scene. Sculptures and paintings are activated as dramatic devices, stages rife with an overabundance of sets, props, actors—though not necessarily proffering straightforward scripts. In a theater, the proscenium is the architectural structure around the stage that separates the stage from the audience and the invisible scrim—the fourth wall—between the fictional play and the real world where the audience is seated. Hundley imagines a scene that is an alternative to the one we exist in. Ancient Greek gods are still worshipped. Gravity is defied by floating rocks and columns. Stickpins, paper, feathers, goat hooves, and spangles have amassed into an impossibly complex and impractical confection held together by a miracle.
Proscenium: Elliot Hundley opens with By Achilles’ Tomb: Elliot Hundley in Ludington Court, an intervention by the artist contrasting and complementing his own works with the Museum’s renowned collection of antiquities.
Proscenium: Elliot Hundley is made possible through the generosity of The Earl and Shirley Greif Charitable Trust, Lilac Drive Foundation, Margaret Campbell Arvey, Susan D. Bowey, Jacquelyn Klein-Brown, Merrill W. Sherman, Susan and Bruce Worster, and anonymous donors.
On view in conjunction with By Achilles’ Tomb: Elliott Hundley and Antiquity @ SBMA.
Free* docent-led gallery tours are conducted daily and meet in Ludington Court near the State Street entrance. Tours provide an engaging opportunity to experience and discuss a variety of works in a relaxed, informal setting.
Tour Availability
11:30 am |
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May: 18 |
June: 13, 22 |
1 pm |
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April: 25, 26, 27, 30 |
May: 1, 3, 4, 9, 11, 15, 17, 21, 24, 25, 30 |
June: 1, 3, 7, 11, 15, 17, 21, 24, 27, 28 |
*free with the price of admission
Santa Barbara Museum of Art Presents Mid-Career Exhibitions by Los Angeles Artist Elliott Hundley Opening April 20, 2025
Proscenium: Elliott Hundley
Through August 31, 2025
By Achilles’ Tomb: Elliott Hundley and Antiquity @ SBMA
Through February 22, 2026
Santa Barbara Museum of Art

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present an extensive mid-career exhibition of work by Elliott Hundley including an innovative installation rethinking the current display of Greco-Roman antiquities in the Museum’s Ludington Court. Proscenium (through August 31, 2025), a broad survey, sees his work through the lens of theater, props, sets, and backdrops. It brings together 50 artworks dating from 2000 to 2025, including paintings, collages, assemblages, bronzes, drawings, rarely seen early works, and loans from private collections. In By Achilles’ Tomb (through February 22, 2026), he rethinks and mischievously upends the display of Greco-Roman antiquities in SBMA’s Ludington Court. Long fascinated by the plays of Euripides (c. 480 – c. 406 BC), especially Medea (c. 431 BC), The Bacchae (c. 405 BC), and Hekabe (c. 424 BC), and ancient Greco-Roman culture and myths, he is an ideal artistic partner to reshape the Museum’s most prominent and public space, which opens onto Santa Barbara’s pedestrianized State Street.
Press Kit
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