Mision Santa Barbara 1935 - 1942

Editor: So, this is James Jones’s "Mision Santa Barbara," a pencil drawing created sometime between 1935 and 1942. The architectural lines are so precise; it's almost clinical in its depiction. What do you see when you look at it? Curator: Well, beyond the immediate architectural realism, I see a potent symbol of colonization and its lasting impact. Jones created this drawing of the Mission Santa Barbara in the mid-20th century, long after the mission’s initial construction in 1786. Editor: How does its history impact our viewing of it? Curator: Consider the missions themselves. They were instruments of cultural and religious conversion imposed on indigenous populations, devastating entire communities and disrupting ancient lifeways. To see it rendered so starkly, devoid of the human cost of its history, is deeply unsettling. Doesn't the drawing feel almost complicit in erasing that history? Editor: I see what you mean. It highlights the architecture but minimizes the mission's full impact. Is Jones making a statement? Curator: It’s hard to say definitively what Jones intended. However, we can interpret this drawing as a commentary on whose history gets prioritized, even celebrated. Consider that it was made decades after the missions’ forced secularization, in an era where there was an emerging re-appreciation for a romanticized ‘Spanish’ past in California, often at the expense of recognizing the erasure and trauma inflicted upon native peoples. Editor: That is an interesting way to view the drawing. Curator: It encourages a dialogue between its visual beauty and its painful legacy, pushing us to confront difficult truths about our shared past. It leaves me wondering about how art can reveal difficult truths about our past.