Image: Art, Design and Architecture Museum at UCSB, New York
The Art, Design & Architecture Museum at UC Santa Barbara will present 'Bonnie Ora Sherk: Life Frames since 1970' from August 26 through November 29, 2026, the first major survey exhibition of the late artist, environmental educator and landscape planner. The museum announced the show in its July newsletter as part of its Summer/Fall 2026 program, positioning Sherk’s work alongside another California-focused exhibition, Jackie Amézquita: 'Gemidos de la Tierra'.
According to the museum’s exhibition materials, 'Bonnie Ora Sherk: Life Frames since 1970' traces Sherk’s environmental art and landscape planning practice from 1970 onward. The newsletter identifies the exhibition as the first major survey of Sherk, whose work is represented in the announcement by a 1970 documentation image of 'Sitting Still I', a performance staged facing construction of the 101 Freeway interchange near Bayshore Boulevard and Army Street. The image credit in the museum’s email cites Robert Campbell and the Bonnie Sherk Estate, with courtesy of Life Frames, Inc., A Living Library, San Francisco.
The museum’s catalog page says 'Bonnie Ora Sherk: Life Frames since 1970' is also the subject of the first exhibition catalog devoted to Sherk’s work. Published by Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture in San Francisco, the 200-page, fully illustrated book includes historic interviews with Sherk conducted by Linda Frye Burnham and Linda M. Montano, writings by Sherk, co-editors Frank Smigiel and Tanya Zimbardo, and contributions from John Bela, Jana Blankenship, Robert Croonquist, Jen Delos Reyes, Karen Moss, Ryan Tacata and Patricia Watts. The catalog is offered by the museum for $40 plus tax and shipping.
Sherk’s practice is identified in the museum’s announcement through the lens of environmental art, education and landscape planning, suggesting a survey that will connect performance, ecological thinking and site-based work. The exhibition title itself invokes the artist’s long-running 'Life Frames' framework, while the newsletter’s pairing of historic documentation with a 2026 museum survey underscores the renewed attention being given to her career after her death.
The exhibition will be on view at the Art, Design & Architecture Museum at UC Santa Barbara in Santa Barbara, California, from August 26 to November 29, 2026. The museum’s newsletter also lists a public reception for Saturday, September 26, from 5:00pm to 7:00pm. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 12 to 5 pm, and the museum describes admission as free.
The same announcement places Sherk’s survey within a broader summer/fall program that includes 'Jackie Amézquita: Gemidos de la Tierra', which opens on the same dates. The museum’s exhibition page says Amézquita’s project is rooted in land-based methodologies and ancestral material knowledge, and that the artist will also take part in a November 1 activation of the work. But in the case of Sherk, the museum’s message is focused squarely on the scope of her own survey and the publication devoted to it, beginning with work from 1970 and extending through the arc of her environmental practice.
