SANTA BARBARA — "Knowledge: Aspects of Conceptual Art" is an ambitious and often engaging exhibition, even though it has ultimately bitten off more than it could possibly chew. The show looks at a central development in (mostly American) art of the last 25 years, juxtaposing Conceptual art of the the 1960s with Post-Conceptual work made since the 1980s. Although not comprehensive, threads of continuity and elements of distinct change emerge.

The show, which is at the University Art Museum at UC Santa Barbara through Feb. 23, was organized by art historian Frances Colpitt, a former faculty member at UCSB now at the University of Texas, San Antonio, and by Phyllis Plous, the highly regarded curator who retired from the museum's staff last June after 28 years of service. As her final UCSB exhibition, "Knowledge" can be seen as something of a summing up for Plous.

The show surveys a period coincident with her tenure at the university. In choosing as its focus the impact and influence of Conceptualism, a radical and challenging mode that put art at the service of philosophical ideas, rather than of aesthetically pleasing objecthood, it doesn't shy away from the difficult and sometimes abstruse.

By connecting the work of well-established artists with that of more recent ones, it also means to make sense of the present through an appeal to history. And through the inclusion of younger artists, ranging from the increasingly significant (Mike Kelley) to the little-known (Antonella Piemontese), it speaks of a committed engagement with the on-going life of culture.

Moreover, in light of the current budget crisis within the University of California system, it is impossible to look at the pointedly titled "Knowledge: Aspects of Conceptual Art" without regarding the presentation as a firm declaration of the centrality of art within higher education. At universities no less than at elementary and secondary schools, the American tendency to marginalize art is strong, and marginality is what makes the budget ax easy to wield. "Knowledge" examines a moment when critical thinking became a primary concern to a variety of important artists, while insisting on its continuing significance to art of the present day.