The San Diego Museum of Art could use your support!
I just read an article this morning concerning layoffs at one of San Diego’s most beloved and important cultural institutions. They’re stressed financially due to the loss of critical grant money.
If you love the San Diego Museum of Art, you can help them out by visiting this museum webpage, and perhaps think about making a donation!
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Look what I happened upon this afternoon while walking through Balboa Park!
Some incredible chalk art has been created in the Plaza de Panama, right in front of the Timken Museum of Art!
The chalk art was created by @sidewalk_chalk_dad. It’s a colorful recreation of Albert Bierstadt’s 1864 oil painting Cho-looke, the Yosemite Fall, which is displayed among other masterpieces inside the free museum.
How amazing is this?
The museum is closed today–a Tuesday–so I couldn’t ask about the chalk art. I suppose it was created over the weekend.
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
Next time you enter the Balboa Park Visitors Center, move to the left side of the front counter and look up. You’ll see an amazing quilt on the wall!
The quilt, titled THE BOTANICAL GARDENS OF BALBOA PARK, depicts the Botanical Building and Lily Pond. It’s so detailed and exquisite that it won a prestigious national award. It took First Place in the Group Quilts category at the American Quilter’s Society 32nd National QuiltWeek competition in 2016! Here’s the AQS website with all the winners.
Who created this fantastic work of art? The eight members of San Diego quilting group Bobbin Buddies! The quilt was made to celebrate Balboa Park’s centennial.
The award-winning quilt would go on to be included in the Brigham City Museum’s 46th International Quilt Invitational Exhibit in 2018.
This webpage describes how the beautiful quilt was created, and how it was purchased by the Balboa Park Conservancy and has been on display in its Visitors Center. (Today the Visitors Center is operated by Forever Balboa Park.)
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The San Diego Museum of Art is celebrating its centennial in 2026. First opening in 1926 as the Fine Arts Gallery, the world-class museum has grown and experienced many remarkable moments over the past hundred years.
That history is remembered in a free exhibition titled SDMA 100 Years. The exhibit opened yesterday in the museum’s Galleries 14/15, which are accessible to the public through a door at Panama 66 in the museum’s sculpture courtyard.
SDMA 100 Years features a timeline of photographs that document the museum’s evolution, from the building’s construction in Balboa Park right up to the present day. There’s also a short documentary video and a display case full of ephemera.
Visitors can observe how the San Diego Museum of Art had its origins in the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, had its successful grand opening in 1926, served as a naval hospital during World War II, and how west and east wings were added for significant expansions.
You’ll see photos showing museum contributions to art education and the San Diego community over the years. You’ll see renowned artists who’ve contributed their work, and relive major exhibitions. You’ll envision what the museum plans for their future, too!
You are invited to contribute to the exhibition! Anyone can submit their personal memories and photographs of the museum. To participate, look for the link at the bottom of this webpage!
SDMA 100 Years will be displayed through 2026, right up to February 2, 2027.
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To follow my blog, find the “Follow” box in this website’s sidebar. Or bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
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A new exhibition has opened at the Timken Museum of Art in Balboa Park. It’s titled Poetic Portraits: Allegory and Identity in 16th Century Europe. Read all about it here.
Visitors to the museum have the opportunity to see the work of notable Renaissance artists, including Sofonisba Anguissola, whose painting Portrait of Giovanni Battista Caselli, on loan from the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, is being displayed in the United States for the first time.
Lovers of fine art and art history will certainly enjoy this exhibition. They’ll also treasure the excellent booklet concerning the artists that is freely handed out at the front desk. It explains how both allegory (symbolism) and identity (descriptive details) combine in the painting of these portraits. This results in a poetic blending of abstract ideals and visual reality.
To most of us here in the 21st century, the people in the portraits are complete strangers. (A few aren’t even positively identified by experts.) But one can see how, compared to flatter, blander pre-Renaissance art, these portraits have assumed a more definite personality.
Gazing at each portrait, I found myself wondering: what had the subject’s true personality been like? The eyes and facial expressions might provide a hint.
The world-class Timken Museum of Art is always free to the public. The exhibition continues through March 29, 2026.
Check out the museum’s website for everything you need to know here.
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
Imagine owning a table umbrella that’s also a work of fine art!
No need to imagine. Look for Studio 26 in Balboa Park’s amazing Spanish Village Art Center. That’s where you’ll find Edward Juarez, the friendly artist who you see in these photographs!
He was painting away when I walked through Spanish Village yesterday. I asked him about the umbrella. When finished, it will have multiple coatings and will be absolutely waterproof. The finished carousel umbrella on the patio nearby has been outdoors for a good while and still looks great.
It was incredible how the cowboy image he was painting came to life and acquired depth as he continued to apply color. This umbrella will be as vibrant as an oil painted framed canvas! He kindly took me into his studio and showed me other Western paintings perfect for this umbrella.
It would be super cool to own one of these table umbrellas, don’t you think? Good news! Edward told me he does commissions! Step into his studio and you’ll notice he paints every kind of subject matter.
There’s an art gallery in Oceanside that you might not know. I stumbled upon it by sheer coincidence the other day.
This surprising art gallery is located inside the historic Sunshine Brooks Theater building, the home of the Oceanside Theatre Company. Very fine works by regional artists hang in the lobby and down a hallway.
The current exhibition of the Brooks Theater Gallery is Black Perspectives 2. The exhibition’s inspiration was the arrival of Juneteenth. This theatre webpage explains that the gallery features previous exhibitors and new POC artists sharing their vision of Black history, culture, family and community.
Incidentally, these fine art pieces are for sale. You can support the artists!
The exhibitions in the gallery change fairly often. Next time you pass by the Sunshine Brooks Theater in downtown Oceanside, why not step through the door as I did and take a peek. You might be surprised!
A few more examples in the gallery…
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
Some fine art can be enjoyed by those visiting Liberty Station in Point Loma. Eight artists who work out of studios at Liberty Station are exhibiting canvases that celebrate San Diego and our local fishing industry.
Most of the displayed pieces can be purchased. They’re all quite good, too.
The Summer Solstice Exhibit can be found in the lobby of the Dick Laub NTC Command Center building and runs May to July 2025.
While you’re at Liberty Station, just roam around. There’s so much to see and do!
(While wandering about today, I discovered a little-seen mosaic from Liberty Station’s history as Naval Training Center San Diego. I’ll blog about that next!)
A few more pieces in the Summer Solstice Exhibit…
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
A popular attraction at the San Diego County Fair is the Exhibition of Fine Art on the first floor of Grandstand East. The fair’s theme in 2025 is our love for pets, so it isn’t surprising many of the fine art entries depict beloved animals.
The exhibition is extensive and broken up into many categories based on media and subject matter. Artists who’ve submitted their work, hoping for a blue ribbon, are from many walks of life all around San Diego County. When I checked out the exhibition, I couldn’t help noticing pets were a common subject, and not just dogs and cats. I saw rabbits, parrots and other critters!
There are pet portraits, pets painted humorously, pet abstracts! If you have a pet or simply love animals, the art will definitely put a smile on your face.
I photographed random examples that I really like…
Look who I met as I left the fine art exhibit. Woof and Meow!
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
There’s a surprising museum jam-packed with wonders that everyone in San Diego should visit. I’m speaking of the Heritage of the Americas Museum in Rancho San Diego.
The Heritage of the Americas Museum is located near the West entrance of Cuyamaca College, immediately adjacent to the Water Conservation Garden. The museum building appears modest at first glance, but when you step through the front door your eyes might pop out of your head!
How do I begin to describe this amazing place?
The museum has four wings. They are dedicated to Archaeology, Anthropology, Natural History and Fine Art. If you wanted to examine every artifact, specimen and work of art, you could easily spend an hour exploring the museum.
Display cases contain objects from the Americas that fall into dozens of categories, whether it might be Peruvian textiles, or Haida and Tlingit artifacts, or paleo points dated 12000 B.C. to 6000 B.C., or millions-year-old fossils, or beautiful sea shells and coral…
When I visited, school children on a field trip were excitedly peering into the displays, seeing new worlds beyond their own life experience.
I’ll share a few photos so you get an idea of the fascinating worlds you’ll encounter, too.
Cool thing: the Heritage of the Americas Museum is free to the public every second Friday of the month!
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
