Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Art museum in downtown Santa Barbara, United States.

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art is an art museum in downtown Santa Barbara, California, housed in a former post office on State Street. Its galleries cover painting, sculpture, photography, and decorative arts, with works spanning from ancient antiquity to the present day.

The post office moved to a new building on Anacapa Street in May 1937, and in July the painter Colin Campbell Cooper proposed converting the vacant State Street building into an art museum. The museum was incorporated in December 1939, and architects David Adler and Chester Carjola gave the 1914 Beaux-Arts building a Spanish Colonial Revival facade. It opened on June 5, 1941, with 45 works and drew more than 75,000 visitors in its first year.

The museum's name comes from its home city, and its founding in 1941 was driven by residents: the painter Colin Campbell Cooper proposed turning the old post office into a gallery in a 1937 letter to the Santa Barbara News-Press. The first director, Donald Bear, came from the Denver Art Museum, and the opening year drew more than 75,000 visitors.

The museum sits on State Street, in the heart of downtown, so it is easy to reach on foot from most central hotels and shops. Parking is available in nearby public garages, and the flat terrain makes the area straightforward to navigate.

The building still retains some original post office details inside, such as certain ceiling elements, which are easy to spot if you look up while moving through the galleries. These traces give the rooms a layer of history that has nothing to do with the art on the walls.