When I meet Lynn Brittner, the executive director of the Santa Barbara Historical Museum, she’s brimming with excitement about the future of the organization. “The museum has been changing to use more of its collection in storage and work more closely with the community,” she tells me over lunch.
She’s particularly proud of the current exhibit, Sacred Art in the Age of Contact.
Focused on the decades from 1769 to 1824 following the Chumash’s first contact with the Spanish, it brings together for the first time a diverse body of objects from collections around Santa Barbara, many of which have never been on display.