In the beginning was the Reynolds. The modest but active and ambitious Reynolds Gallery was Westmont College’s public-invited art space for many years, and served its purpose well, as the school’s art department and interests were going upwardly mobile. Tony Askew and John Carlander were professor/artists involved in the Reynolds era’s upkeep and upturn.
That seminal period begat a fuller coming-of-age expansion of the Westmont art factor, with the 2008 arrival of Judy Larson, fresh from a directorial position at the prestigious Women’s Museum in Washington, D.C., and ready to embark on the creation of a vastly larger art push on campus. Her westward trek established her as the director/curator of a new, respectable and full-fledged new museum of art, part of the expansive Adams Visual Art Center, opened in 2010.
This bit of pre-history of the museum — the most recent addition to the humble landscape of official art museum enterprises in Santa Barbara — is the implicit, rootsy backdrop of a special summer exhibition now on view, Building a Collection, 2008-2025, Honoring Director Judy Larson. As Larson leaves her formidable post and legacy, recently retiring after 17 years fighting the good fight for art’s sake, this is a ripe moment to take and do the math of her achievements.
