Support the Archive
Fr. Virgil Cordano Conservation Fund
You can honor Fr. Virgil Cordano, former guardian of OMSB, by partnering with SBMAL to help conserve our unique collections with your gift. Donations help fund projects to clean and repair art, rare books, documents, and artifacts in our collections.
Recent projects include the restoration of Edwin Deakin's 21 late 19th-century paintings of the Alta California Missions, the restoration of a 1488 edition of Thomas à Kempis's The Imitation of Christ, and the items pictured below.
Contributions can be sent to Santa Bárbara Mission Archive-Library at 2201 Laguna Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93103.
Our Lady of Refuge, 1841
The left side of Our Lady of Refuge shows the painting pre-restoration while the right side shows post-restoration completed in 2015. Conservation funded in part by a generous grant from California Missions Foundation (CMF).
Padre Jose Maria de Jesus Gonzales Rubio, 1850
This image was taking mid-restoration. The left side shows the painting pre-restoration, while the right side shows the painting after restoration was completed in 2016. This process revealed the artist's signature. Conservation funded in part by CMF.