9 Museums to Explore in Santa Barbara County

The Art, Design & Architecture Museum , formerly the University Art Museum, is located on the campus of the UCSB in Goleta, California. It was originally a gallery for art education at UCSB. Today the AD&A contains a fine art collection of over 8,500 works. It also possesses over 1,000,000 architectural drawings, historic photographs, writings, scrapbooks, and three-dimensional objects in the Architecture and Design Collection.

This is a train station building in Goleta, California constructed by the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1901. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the California Register of Historical Resources and is the centerpiece of the South Coast Railroad Museum.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, a contemporary art museum, is at Santa Barbara, United States.The categories covered by MCASB involve various fields of design. It includes the topic of male and female, media, race, and geological study. It aims at displaying, expressing, discovering, and exploring the potential of the art and design in this era.

The San José Museum of Art is a modern and contemporary art museum in downtown San Jose, California. This is the largest provider of arts education in Santa Clara County, serving over 45,000 children per year. The permanent collection focuses on contemporary art by US West Coast artists, with a growing emphasis on art of the Pacific Rim. The collection includes more than 2,600 artworks in a variety of media including sculpture, paintings, prints, digital media, photographs, and drawings.

The Santa Barbara Historical Museum is located in Santa Barbara, California, U.S. It features relics from Chumash, Spanish, Mexican, Yankee, and Chinese cultures, including artifacts, photographs, furnishings and textiles, dating as far back as the 15th century.

Santa Barbara Maritime Museum is one of the best things to do in Santa Barbara, particularly for families. Discover 13,000 years of human interaction with the Santa Barbara Channel inside the doors of this hidden gem, overlooking the scenic Santa Barbara Harbor.Through the museum’s many hands-on activities, you can learn about sustainable fishing in a kelp forest, raising a sail, diving, sport fishing and more. Stop by the onsite gallery to see rotating exhibits of ocean-themed artwork.

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art is an art museum located in downtown Santa Barbara, California. It is home to both permanent and special collections, the former of which includes Asian, American, and European art that spans 4,000 years from ancient to modern. Its permanent collection includes more than 27,000 works of art, including paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, photographs, ceramics, glass, jades, bronzes, lacquer and textiles

Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum in Santa Barbara, California. The museum has ten indoor exhibit halls focusing on regional natural history including astronomy, birds, insects, geology, mammals, marine life, paleontology, plant life, and the Chumash Indians. It holds a research library, the John & Peggy Maximus Art Gallery and is the only museum to house a full-dome planetarium on the Central Coast.

The South Coast Railroad Museum, focuses on the history, technology, and adventure of railroading. Special emphasis is placed on the railroad's contributions to local history, on the Southern Pacific Railroad, and on the key role of the railroad depot in rural community life across America. The museum also features the Goleta Short Line, a 7+1⁄2 in gauge miniature railroad, a Southern Pacific caboose, and a model train set in a panorama of the cities of Goleta and Santa Barbara, California