I love museums on the move, particularly those that take their mission to educate, seriously. Located in a beautifully-renovated former post office, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (left) boasts an international collection deserving of repeated accolades. With the earliest renovation of the original structure by architect David Adler in 1939, and with several more expansions and improvements to the space over several decades, the newly renovated Park Wing Entrance and Luria Activities Center opened in June, 2006. The institution is now celebrating its 70th anniversary year with the addition of the newly-installed Lansdowne Dionysus in its entrance courtyard. Drawn from the collection of Wright Ludington, a life-long patron of the museum, the piece serves as an elegant reminder that the museum holds the second-largest collection of Greco-Roman sculpture in California, only to be outdone by the mighty museum atop a Los Angeles hill—the Getty. artes fine arts magazine

This architectural gem, with its elegant permanent collection came to my attention because of the recent installation of a newly-conserved, first-or-second-century Roman statue, the Landsdowne Dionysus. With its arrival comes a unique opportunity to witness the professional care and attention that attend a museum’s responsibility in caring for and conserving artifacts from the past; then to beautifully present them in ways that contextualize their importance in the grand scope of history. The recently-refurbished Santa Barbara Museum of Art accomplishes both tasks in ways that win accolades.

But, first a bit of contemporary history…

Charles H. Ludington was a corporate lawyer and investment banker. For a number of years, he was involved with the Curtis Publishing Company, best known as the publisher of the popular magazine The Saturday Evening Post. Charles Ludington passed away in 1927 and son, Wright Ludington inherited his estate. He rechristened his home Val Verde and engaged nationally-known landscape architect Lockwood de Forest Jr., to transform the gardens. De Forest worked on the gardens on and off for most of the rest of his life; they are his crowning achievement. The estate’s reservoir became a swimming pool and Ludington had an art gallery built to house his growing collections. Ludington utilized the atrium to house his collection of classical statuary.

Wright Ludington’s love of art can be traced back to family trips to Europe in the 1920s. He was an eclectic collector. He gathered antiquities from the Middle East, Greece, and Rome, some more than 4,000 years old. He also collected modern masters such as Picasso, Matisse, Dalí, and Degas and was often ahead of the curve in recognizing talent. An accomplished artist in his own right, Ludington studied at Yale, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Art Students League of New York. During World War II, he designed camouflage for the Army.

Ludington was one of the founders of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, serving as a vice president of the board in 1940 and president in 1951. He endowed the central atrium of the museum to hold his donated collection of classical sculpture, in honor of his father. Over the years he gave the museum over 300 pieces, including an impressive collection of Asian artwork in 1983, again, in honor of his father. Through his gifts Ludington hoped that others’ lives “will be enriched as mine has been by the many wonderful things artists can tell us.”

Wright Ludington passed away in 1992 at the age of 91.

In 2009, the Museum acquired two significant works of art that were originally part of the Ludington collection. The works included a Roman sarcophagus of the 1st or 2nd century CE, and a large fragment of a monumental marble statue dating from about the 2nd century CE. Transporting, conserving, and cleaning a 900-pound, over life-size fragment of marble Roman statue can be a daunting process. It took months of careful planning and conservation assistance from neighboring J. Paul Getty Museum’s Antiquities Conservation Department. The sarcophagus was in good enough condition to be put on view, but the statue fragment had been displayed outdoors for many years, suffering the effects of environmental exposure. A conservation effort would first be needed, before this antiquarian treasure could be placed on display.

The Dionysus sculpture was originally lifted from a bog along with more than 70 individual works of ancient sculpture at Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli in the mid-18th century. Constructed around 120 CE, the Villa had been lavishly decorated inside and out with some of the greatest Roman works of all time, most based on Greek originals. The systematic excavations at the site sparked a flourish of antiquarian, architectural, and artistic study of the spectacular buildings, and sculptures that were being unearthed. Some of the other marbles from that bog are now housed in other prestigious museum collections, including the Capitoline Museums, the Louvre and the Vatican Museums.

When the Dionysus torso was excavated, it came into the hands of Bartolomeo Cavaceppi (1716-1799), a sculptor who ran a large workshop in Rome restoring ancient marble sculptures. Cavaceppi’s records show that the torso received a new head, arms, legs, and a support consisting of a tree trunk entwined with grapevines (see illustration) to satisfy the taste of the day for whole statues, rather than archaeological fragments.

Left: Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, engraving of Dionysus from multi-volume, illustrated record of the works of art, published in 1768-1772.

The restored Dionysus was then sold to the first Marquis of Lansdowne (1737-1805), a British politician and art collector who amassed a spectacular collection of ancient marble sculpture to adorn his house in London.

In 1930, when Lansdowne’s descendants put his sculptures up for auction, the Lansdowne Dionysus was purchased by Wright Ludington. The statue was brought to California, the 18th-century restorations were removed, and the remaining ancient torso was installed in the gardens of Ludington’s Val Verde estate in Montecito?until 70 years later, when SBMA was able to acquire it.

Once in the collection of the museum, the piece was carefully inspected and a conservation plan was developed. Identified through its “attributes” (an animal skin and a chiton, traces of which are discernible on the piece) as a representation of Dionysus, the god of wine, the sculpture was conserved by Elizabeth (‘Liz’) Chayes and Jerry Podany, independent contractors, in consultation with curators and conservators at the Getty Villa in Malibu, CA..

According to Liz Chayes, there are many challenges in conserving a stone sculpture that has been exposed to an uncontrolled, outdoor environment. Aside from temperature fluctuations, dirt accumulation, and moisture, there are microorganisms, algae, and lichen that can deteriorate and discolor the stone. Chayes also had to contend with the fact that the Lansdowne Dionysus has been restored numerous times in the past, sometimes almost beyond recognition.

After a careful and systematic cleaning of the marble, the piece was stabilized to improve its structural integrity, as the original stand it had been mounted on created pressure on the marble and an increased propensity for fracture.

Only after its comprehensive restoration could the authentic Lansdowne Dionysus be installed in the museum’s Ludington Court, joining the important group of antiquities that Ludington had given to the Museum years earlier. Over the years, Ludington had donated hundreds of works to SBMA, ranging from antiquity to the 20th century, including the magnificent Lansdowne Hermes, which has graced the Museum’s Ludington Court since 1998. After many years, Hermes has now been reunited with its equally extraordinary counterpart.

By Richard Friswell, Managing Editor

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art is a privately funded, not-for-profit institution that presents internationally recognized collections and exhibitions and a broad array of cultural and educational activities as well as travel opportunities around the world.

Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1130 State Street, Santa Barbara, CA.

Open Tuesday – Sunday 11 am to 5 pm. Closed Monday. 805.963.4364

To learn more about the extensive museum holdings, spanning 5,000 years of world cultural history, visit: www.sbma.net