Podcast F. Santa Barbara Museum of Art: Nazis in California (1941)

This audio runs through newspaper reporting on the opening of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in June 1941, within the context of the war in Europe and the Von Romberg Gallery.

The key speech was how art was a force for good against Hitler.

The Von Romberg Gallery in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art was named after Max von Romberg of Montecito by Emily Hall Tremaine in 1939, a year after Max’s death in a suspicious plane crash; he was flying the plane. At that time, Emily Hall Tremaine was known as Emily Spreckels; previously she was Emily von Romberg, Max’s wife from 1928 to the date of his death.

What’s surprising is that just two months earlier in April 1941, Emily had just stepped out of the “He’s a Nazi, no SHE is” divorce battle with Adolph B. Spreckels, Jr., reported in media waves nationally starting in September 1940 until the case was surprisingly dismissed.

It is understood that Emily and Max were connected to anti-Nazi US military intelligence, however that definitive documentation from declassified military intelligence has not yet been found.

What did attendees at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art opening know about Emily and Max—that we don’t? What records are in the archive at the museum, and who attended the opening? Was US Naval Intelligence there? When will the museum make this information publicly available to help clarify Emily and Max’s roles in the anti-Nazi / Nazi battle in California?