Santa Barbara Historical Museum

A nice small museum with friendly and helpful staff members. Their collections focus on Spanish, Mexican and American periods including the 1925 Santa Barbara earthquake. Suggested donation is $ 5.00. This is a good one hour stop but not a must see museum.

I LOVE DJ’ing Weddings at Santa Barbara Historical Museum. The lower courtyard is great for Wedding ceremonies and at night I love to rock the upper courtyard with Santa Barbara DJs at Scott Topper Productions. Really fun working with Action Photo Booth to enhance the reception with fun props!

Our family has lived in Santa Barbara for 5 generations, so we take great interest in our local history. We’ve enjoyed this charming museum for years, but today when we visited we were put off by the unfriendly receptionist demanding that we «check in» by giving her our zip code. Common sense dictates that if you’re going to ask for donations you should do so in a more pleasant manner.

Had my wedding here and loved every moment here! It was very important to us that we have an outdoor venue where we could hold the ceremony and reception. This was the perfect place! The venue is spacious and beautiful, guests could party it up on the dance floor or take a nice stroll. The weather was perfect in September and we didn’t even need heat lamps.
We worked with Erika the rental coordinator, Rincon Catering and Bella Vista Designs. They made our wedding venue gorgeous!

We recently had the honor of attending a wedding here and it was absolutely stunning!!! It had plenty of room for roughly 200 people. Large dance floor and the location down below was just magical for the ceremony. Beautiful Beautiful!!!

Wonderful museum just a couple of blocks from State Street /​downtown and really worth a visit.
The place has great, rotating exhibits with rooms that showcase the history of Santa Barbara society and culture. You can learn a lot in just a short time about our beautiful city.
Outside are beautiful grounds that remind you of old California. Be sure to check out the old Meridian Studios just down the street.
Now, they have a suggested donation at the front but you can give them $ 1000 if you’re Oprah. Or, just walk in for free with your tail between your legs. But try and give them at least a couple bucks. It’s worth it.

Before I get into the actual review, I would like to say that I am actually giving this museum four and a half stars. Unfortunately, the half star does not show up so I am going to just give it four.
This is an interesting little museum where you can learn more about Santa Barbara. For someone who is as interested in history as I am, this was a must see for when I visited Santa Barbara. There were exhibits inside which as I said earlier, talked about the history of Santa Barbara from the Indians who first lived on the land to the Spanish who came over to now through the usage of mostly artifacts and art.
While this is not necessarily the place I’d suggest visitors to see first, it is definitely a place that they should go to and see while in Santa Barbara. When I first found out about this museum, I knew I would have to go here if possible. So I checked to see its location relative to the other attractions that I wanted to visit and I saw that it was not too far away from most of the other places that I planned to go to, making this an automatic no-​brainer to visit. The museum isn’t too far away from State St, which is basically the main street in Santa Barbara, home to restaurants, stores and many other things.
So why not give this museum five stars? Quite honestly, I felt that there was something missing. Museum staff were friendly so that wasn’t the issue. It’s free although there’s a suggested donation but that wasn’t the issue. Maybe because it was when I went there, I had not slept the day before? Who knows but I just feel that it’s not worthy of five stars. I still highly recommend it but I’m not quite sure if this is somewhere I would take kids to.

We visited this museum in January this year. I looked into Santa Barbara, see what else is to visit in town. We visited SB several times, saw the Mission, visited the Art Museum a few times, El Presidio, etc. So what else can you visit?
I read about the Historical Museum on line, saw it from outside many times when we were in SB, but never went inside.
Don’t underestimate it! It’s off the State Street, you can walk to it in a minute, it also has free parking! You can spend at least an hour inside.
The staff is nice, it’s free and there is a lot to learn about the history of Santa Barbara and California in general. It’s far from being boring, they have a lot of interesting things on display-​paintings, objects, photographs, sculptures, etc, with great descriptions and explanations and some interactive screens. Who knew there was a movie studio in SB during the silent era?
You learn a lot and at the end you can stroll and relax in their beautiful gardens behind the building. They also have temporary exhibits, the one we saw it was very interesting «Spirit of the West” — paintings of a Swedish artist (Carl Oscar Borg) who fell in love with SB and stayed in the area for most of his life.
They also have guided tours in the weekends at 2 PM, but we missed it, didn’t get there on time.
Check their site, hours and visit it next time you’re in SB– it could be a rich experience and learn more about the fascinating history of the area!

FABULOUS! How have I lived in Santa Barbara all this time and NEVER been here?!? Located just 2 blocks from State Street (and next to my favorite bakery!), the SB Historical musuem is a real treasure. We heard that the museum had a great exhibit about the old silent film studio that was in town a century ago, so we popped in on a sunday afternoon.
The Silent Film exhibit is tempoarary, so catch it while you can! There are some great old films projected onto the wall and comfy couches to sit in. And the permament collection is AMAZING! Who knew that SB had such a colorful past? Bandits, Spanish Explorers, inventors, psychics, and more artists than I would have guesed. In fact, there is a fine display on Ed Borein’s works and a great example of the arts and crafts movements. Oh, and a GIANT gold-​gilded Chinese Shrine. All of this just 2 blocks off of State??? AMAZING!
And when you’ve seen the galleries, you can wander outside into their courtyards! So sunny and bright! All I needed was a margarita! Just wonderful. Free parking lot (which means no pesky parking tickets!), a great gift shop with local goods, and very friendly and knowlagable staff.
We had to run after about 45 minutes, but I’ll definitely be back for one of their free tours — Saturdays and Sundays at 2:00!

This is one great little museum, situated within walking distance of the downtown Presidio. This is a modest, well maintained building, made to look like an old adobe building with a large courtyard and very tasteful but water friendly landscaping.
We came because of a small exhibit of the silent film era. Did you know that they were making films in Santa Barbara long before Hollywood? 1910 to 1916. And you can watch some of them.
You can sit down and view four films that survived that era, made by the Flying A movie company, all digitized with appropriate piano music background. You will love the cowboys, villains, heroines, captioning, and melodrama. And then, there are the great, early fan letters. This fun exhibit will be there until mid August, 2012.
Free entrance and parking, donations accepted. Great little gift shop too.
The remainder of the museum is interesting too. There are displays of artifacts, period costumes, and interesting placards giving you an «in a nutshell» summary of early California history in Santa Barbara. You will recognize the names of the people who had a profound influence in developing Santa Barbara. We have cities and streets all over California named after them.
We spent a good 2 hours there, and did not feel rushed. Glad for the free parking right next door, important since you must pay for parking in most areas.

This is a lovely and charming place which captures the flavor of the area. The buildings are nice, Spanish style and the exhibits well composed. Another special feature are the beautiful paintings within many of the dioramas.

Amazing paintings and wonderful exhibtion of Santa Barbara’s multi-​cultural past! I went for the Colin Campbell Cooper exhibition, very impressive show! Admission free, suggested $ 5 donation, easy parking downtown. A must see! Gift store has a nice assortment of specialty unique SB items items and local history/​art books. I got a Santa Barbara magnet for my fridge and a vintage aerial view note card. Staff is friendly and helpful.

I was visiting Santa Barbara for a weekend getaway with my wife. Whenever we go away, we generally focus on three things; our holiday holy trinity, if you will. Visual (sightseeing), Experience (entertainment /​food) and Cerebral (learning about history & culture).
In less than one hour at the Museum, we gained great insight into the history of Santa Barbara, from the natives who once thrived here, before European disease was introduced, to the Spanish settlement, up to near present. The displays were quite interesting and well informed. With this base of knowledge, we wandered the town on foot with a much greater appreciation for what Santa Barbara is all about.
Esthetically, the grounds are very beautiful and peaceful. A wonderful place to pause for a few minutes and enjoy the day.

This is a very nice little museum a little off the beaten path of State Street. It is free with a suggested donation of $ 5. Staff are very friendly and the exhibits are fantastic. Beautiful paintings along with many historical artifacts showing the history of Santa Barbara. Worth a look.