Show Me Something Good

A modern living room with large glass windows overlooking a cityscape. Inside, there is a man wearing sunglasses and a hat, sitting relaxed on a lounge chair with his legs crossed. The room has minimalistic furniture, including a low coffee table, and decorative items like candles and vases. There are plants outside and the space is well-lit with natural light.

For three years I designed and hosted, alongside their team, travel programs for the patrons of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Week-long trips built on places and ideas, not itineraries. Marfa to Bentonville: three nights in Donald Judd’s West Texas, then Crystal Bridges, the Bachman-Wilson House, George Dombek’s studio, and a Fay Jones chapel in the Ozarks. Chicago, for EXPO and the architecture. Los Angeles, for John Lautner’s Sheats-Goldstein house and Wright’s Hollyhock House, after a lecture at the museum on the line that runs from Wright through Fay Jones to Southern California.

They sold out every year. What I was doing, really, was showing people a place. Not the highlights. The place. Getting a group of accomplished, busy people to slow down, get quiet, and understand the deeper meaning of somewhere: an art form, an idea, a building, a field of concrete boxes in the desert. Santa Barbara let me go wild with it. They trusted me with a remarkable group of people and let me teach them about joy, love, art, architecture, and what it feels like to experience all of it together.

Hosting is a design problem. Who sits where at dinner. What you say before the door opens. When to stop talking and let the room do it. The travelers came back year after year, and some of them are still in my life. That’s the measure.

This is where the studio’s cultural programming comes from. An exhibition, a trip, a dinner, and a room are the same discipline at different scales: arrange the ideas so the people inside them arrive at the same feeling at once.

Program design, curatorial lead, and host for the museum’s patrons, 2017 – 2019. Marfa to Bentonville (2017, 2018, 2019). EXPO Chicago (2019), Los Angeles Architecture (2019). Lecture: “California Dreaming,” February 2019.

A person with a large black hat and beige pants standing in an indoor space with pink walls, looking at a colorful light installation featuring vertical blue and yellow stripes, illuminated with pink and purple lighting.
Empty garage or storage space with unfinished walls and a wooden ceiling. Sunlight is coming through multiple small windows on the right, casting rectangular light patterns on the concrete floor. There is an orange object on the floor near the center.
People sitting at tables inside a large, industrial-style building with high ceilings, windows, and exposed metal beams, likely attending a social gathering or event.
A group of people gathered in an art gallery, looking at paintings on the wall. The gallery has white walls and wooden floors.
A dimly lit indoor bar or restaurant with a group of people sitting around tables, some wearing cowboy hats, and a ceiling fan with colorful flashing lights reflecting off the ceiling.
Crushed yellow promotional cardboard box with black text and metal wiring, lying on a white surface.
Exhibition space in a grand hall with ornate ceiling, large arched windows, and cityscape outside. Art displays include digital screens showing city scenes and a wooden structure.
Three people are gathered in an art gallery with a large colorful mural of a surrealist face with a single eye behind them. The elderly man is seated in a chair, holding a book, with a table of books and magazines in front. Two women stand next to him, smiling and leaning slightly forward. The room has wooden floors, a patterned rug, and various books on the table.
A courtyard with a brick pathway surrounded by potted plants, trees, and lush greenery, leading to a modern building with large glass windows and an open interior visible inside.
People relaxing by a swimming pool with a view of hillside houses and trees in the background.
A modern sculpture of a leafless tree with metallic, twisted branches in front of a museum building with a sign that reads 'Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.' The sky is at sunset with pink and blue hues, and there are leafless trees surrounding the scene.
Colorful artwork of four cowboy figures with hats, boots, and a pipe, standing against a white wooden background with a red diamond shape and the number 1 in the center.
Interior of a modern building with a large mirror reflecting trees, plants, and sky outside. There is a table with objects on it, and a partial view of a couch.
Neon sign in yellow and white reads, "YOU'RE OBVIOUSLY IN THE WRONG PLACE" on a black wall. Several white mannequins in casual clothing are positioned in front of the wall, with some seated and one standing, and a woman with glasses and a patterned jacket stands near the mannequins looking at them.
Colorful mural depicting a young man with brown hair and a woman with black hair and a straw hat riding a horse, set against a desert landscape with a clear blue sky and sparse vegetation, with a yellow vintage car and a building in the background.