On Saturday the gates at 2559 Puesta del Sol will stay closed to anyone without a ticket. By early afternoon, booths will line the museum's backyard, the banks of Mission Creek and the oak woodland at the back of the 17-acre campus. Chefs and winemakers will be serving their own food and pouring their own wine. The museum's sponsor materials plan for about 500 guests, plus more than 100 volunteers, vendors and press along the creek.
This is the first Santa Barbara Fall Tasting Festival, and it's one of two changes the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History is making this season. The second comes after Thanksgiving, when the museum's Chumash basketry exhibit leaves its gallery and moves into Fleischmann Auditorium. On its exhibit calendar, the museum calls the auditorium "the central space where we come together as a community." Both changes come down to what the museum wants its gathering places to hold.
Why the Beer Festival Stepped Aside
The museum's June Santa Barbara Wine Festival heads into its 39th year and sells out every year. The museum has long wanted a fall event to pair with it. For the last few years that was the Mission Creek Beer Festival, which drew smaller crowds. Jonah Haas, the museum's director of marketing and communications, explained why to the Santa Barbara Independent:
"It was too easy for people to say, 'I'm not a beer drinker, so that's not for me.'"
The fix was to widen what's served. The Fall Tasting Festival pours wine, craft beer, spirits, coffee and non-alcoholic drinks, with plenty of food, and most vendors come from Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. Haas told the Independent the event is "the cool, younger sibling to the wine festival." He also said the November date lets the selections "be more harvest focused."
The Independent's preview named several food vendors:
- Bistro Amasa
- Convivo
- Marisella
- The Knock
It also named these drink producers: Foxen, Hermanas Amigas Tequila, Margerum, Third Window and Tyler x Lieu Dit. Larry Schaeffer, who has poured his tercero wines at the Wine Festival for years, will pour here too. "This event is all about community," he told the Independent.
The money stays in the canyon's own programs. All of the profits go to the museum's education programs. These include the Star Parties astronomy nights, school field trips and the teen mentorship program Quasars to Sea Stars. Seventy percent of the field-trip funding goes to Title I schools. Mission Wealth is the presenting sponsor.
Saturday, November 7, on Both Sides of the Canyon
The festival lands on a busy day for this end of town. Up the road, the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden holds its Fall Plant Sale the same Saturday. Here's how the day lays out:
| Time | Where | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| 9 to 11 a.m. | Botanic Garden | Early shopping for members at the Fall Plant Sale; reservations required |
| All day | Natural History Museum | Closed for regular visits during the festival |
| 1 p.m. | Botanic Garden | Plant sale opens to the public |
| 1 p.m. | Natural History Museum | Early-entry festival guests arrive; $165 |
| 2 to 5 p.m. | Natural History Museum | General admission; $125 |
Both festival tickets include all food and drinks. The event is 21 and up and goes ahead rain or shine. At the Botanic Garden, the nursery is closed for in-person and online purchases from Wednesday, November 4, through Friday, November 6, to prepare for the sale. Only service animals are allowed at the sale.
Sunday has its own schedule changes. The museum's Sea Center on the waterfront opens at noon on November 8 instead of 10 a.m. because of road closures for a half-marathon. Sunday is also the last day to see The Living Print in the museum's Courtyard Gallery.
The Room the Museum Calls Its Center
Sunday, November 30, is the last day to see Chumash Basketry: Art & Life in its current gallery. A lightly updated version reopens in Fleischmann Auditorium on Monday, December 21.
The museum calls the move a homecoming. Fleischmann Auditorium opened in 1937, and starting the next year it showed exhibits on Native American cultures. In the museum's words, the move returns "exhibits about people and living cultures" to the building's communal heart.
The exhibit's current gallery also holds a Chumash tomol, or plank canoe. Fernando Librado Kitsepawit and anthropologist John P. Harrington built it for display in 1915, and it never went to sea. The canoe in Fleischmann Auditorium has a different history.
The Canoe Already Waiting in Fleischmann
The auditorium is home to the Helek, which the museum calls a historic Chumash plank canoe. It was built in 1976 by Chumash Ksen John Ruiz and museum curator Travis Hudson, with technical help from Pete Holworth and Harry Davis's boatyard. They worked from Harrington's notes on what Kitsepawit knew. So the 1915 canoe and the 1976 one are linked through the same man's knowledge, recorded six decades apart.
The National Park Service says the Helek was the first tomol built in 142 years. The Northern Chumash Tribal Council's account gives the details of the boat and its voyage:
- Size: 26 feet 9 inches long, carrying about 2,000 pounds, finished by June 1976
- Departure: East Beach on June 26, 1976, after sea trials and paddling practice
- Route: San Miguel Island to Santa Rosa Island, then on to Santa Cruz Island
- Captains: John Ruiz and Victor "Slo'w" Gutierrez, with a crew of ten
Starting December 21, the baskets will share a room with a canoe that made the crossing to the islands.
What Fills the Weeks in Between
The exhibit is off view for three weeks between November 30 and December 21, but the rest of the museum stays open. Dinorama is on view through March 14, 2027, and has a winter family activity morning on Saturday, December 12. Selby's Circles runs through January 4, 2027, and Mammal Hall and the Backyard remain open.
Up the road at the Botanic Garden, Still Growing: 100 Years of California's Native Plants is on view through March 21, 2027. The exhibit of archival photographs is in the Pritzlaff Conservation Center Gallery. Down the hill, Old Mission Santa Barbara holds its Sip & Stroll Holiday Market on Friday, December 4, from 5 to 8 p.m., with local wine, beer, food and crafts.
By December 21, the museum will have held its first harvest festival on the creek and returned the Chumash baskets to the 1937 auditorium where the Helek sits.
For many Riviera households, the museum, the Garden and the Mission are close enough to feel like part of home. If you'd like to talk about life near Mission Canyon or what a home in this part of town means for your plans, Chris Palme would be glad to hear from you. Let's Connect.
