Martin Mull: The Joys of Indoor/Outdoor Living

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art presents Martin Mull: The Joys of Indoor/Outdoor Living, running June 27 to October 17, 2027. Co-curated by comedian and art collector Steve Martin and Ann Philbin, director emerita of the Hammer Museum, it is the first major museum exhibition of Mull's artwork in 20 years and will fill the museum's 6,000 square feet of main galleries with more than 50 paintings and drawings. Martin Mull, who died in 2024, was widely known as an actor, comedian, and musician, but considered painting his true vocation. He earned an MFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1967 and exhibited throughout his entertainment career. His cool, surreal, and often dark canvases draw on his Midwestern childhood and old photographs to stage physically impossible scenes set in the suburbs of the 1950s and 1960s, illuminating the tensions beneath the postwar American dream. Most works are on loan from the artist's estate and the collections of friends including Jennifer Tilly, Ted and Nicole Sarandos, and Steve Martin. The show reunites Martin and Philbin, who previously collaborated on The Idea of North: The Paintings of Lawren Harris at the Hammer Museum in 2015. It is led with SBMA chief curator James Glisson and director and CEO Amada Cruz, and Martin will contribute to the exhibition catalogue. Mull's work is held in collections including LACMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Walker Art Center.