The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, on State Street, holds a small but consistently good permanent collection covering antiquity (a respectable Greek and Roman gallery), 19th-century American painting, and modern art with a Pacific-rim emphasis. The Asian collection is the strength: Chinese ceramics, Japanese woodblock prints, Tibetan religious art.
The museum is housed in a 1920s Spanish Colonial Revival building (originally a post office) and is free on Sunday mornings. Plan around 90 minutes.