A great exhibition opened earlier this month at the Gaslamp Museum in the historic Davis-Horton House. San Diego’s First People is the name of the exhibition. It’s presented by the Sycuan Cultural Resource Center and Museum.
Artifacts and a series of displays detail the history, life and culture of the Kumeyaay people, who inhabited the San Diego and surrounding region thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans.
Visitors also learn how the resilient Kumeyaay people thrive today, while maintaining their cultural identity through oral traditions, songs and ceremonies.
This special exhibition continues through May 30, 2026. Click here for more information!
The Mingei International Museum in Balboa Park has a great exhibit outside its east entrance that celebrates the San Diego Craft Collective. Beautiful objects crafted by members of the collective are proudly displayed!
A collaboration between the Mingei and the San Diego Craft Collective makes perfect sense. The museum collects, conserves and exhibits folk art, craft, and design. The family-friendly San Diego Craft Collective, located in Liberty Station, teaches it members traditional craft, including woodworking, ceramics, textiles, fiber arts, glass art and more. They are dedicated to sustainability, utilizing natural and recycled materials. The collective even teaches organic gardening!
A couple years ago I visited the San Diego Craft Collective. I was amazed by the extent of their facility and the diversity of work by its members. If you want to read that past blog post and see those photographs, click here.
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A remodel of the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center building has altered the visitor experience. The main entrance and lobby are now near the old IMAX theater lobby. The museum’s original entrance has been repurposed, turning it into new gallery space.
In addition, the Fleet Science Center’s café will soon be enlarged. Once the café reopens, there will still be outdoor dining, plus a dedicated spot where visitors can purchase always super popular soft serve ice cream.
I ventured inside the remodeled museum yesterday…
The spacious new lobby and front desk…
Looking to my left, there are displays and images on a temporary partition. Somewhere beyond it will be the enlarged café. (Not sure about a gift shop. Forgot to ask.)
After moving through much of the museum, I peeked into the original lobby, which is currently roped off. It will become new gallery space.
The new main entrance to the Fleet Science Center is where that blue canopy is. What do you think?
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By driving east of San Diego to Campo this weekend, you can enjoy free admission to four cool attractions!
Admission will be free at the Campo Railroad Museum, the Motor Transport Museum, the Gaskill Brothers Stone Store, and the Camp Lockett Equestrian and Event Facility!
This weekend, May 2-3, 2026, Campo Days promises unforgettable family-friendly experiences. Pile the kids in the car and have an adventure!
The incredible Campo Railroad Museum, operated by the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum Association, itself is worth the trip. You can explore many old train cars parked on tracks at the museum, and even ride a vintage train should you purchase a ticket! Learn more about the Campo Railroad Museum at their website here.
I learned about Campo Days when I swung by the La Mesa Depot Museum today. This small free museum is also operated by the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum Association.
Station master Timothy showed me some of the work being done to restore No. 3, the 1923 steam locomotive which you might have seen while driving through downtown La Mesa. I blogged about its history and restoration about a year ago here.
Timothy loves to talk about trains and his personal experience as an engineer. The always free La Mesa Depot Museum also has a cool HO-scale train layout kids love.
If you can’t make it to Campo Days this weekend, head to La Mesa on a Tuesday or Thursday from 12:00 pm to 3:00 pm, when the La Mesa Depot Museum is open. Admit it–you love trains, too!
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Top Secret: Inside the High-Stakes World of Naval Intelligence is a fantastic exhibit that opened on the USS Midway Museum last year. I finally checked it out a few days ago.
The exhibit takes visitors through the Carrier Intelligence Center, which is contained in a surprisingly large area (1,500 square feet) under the USS Midway aircraft carrier’s flight deck, spanning its entire width. During Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the Carrier Intelligence Center served as the nerve center for intelligence gathering and analysis, mission planning, and strategic decision-making.
Today visitors can enjoy interactive displays that demonstrate how, years ago, in a less technologically advanced era, naval intelligence was gathered and analyzed, to aid combat operations, search and rescue, and humanitarian missions.
Walking through the exhibit, I observed how Intelligence Specialists worked like detectives. It was interesting to see how analog instruments were used to analyze gathered information. Imagine my surprise seeing an old-fashioned slide rule, which was used to calculate the size of structures in photos taken from a great distance! Some of the original, restored equipment includes teletypes and radio receivers.
I learned that specialists who gathered, analyzed and acted upon critical information included Air Intelligence Officers, Aerographer’s Mates, Photographers Mates, Cryptologic Technicians, Squadron Aviation Intelligence Officers… In combat, when every moment might mean life or death, everyone must work quickly and efficiently as a team to achieve success.
Top Secret: Inside the High-Stakes World of Naval Intelligence is so amazing it earned the MUSE Gold Award in the Experiential and Immersive Exhibition category!
If all this sounds interesting to you, head over the USS Midway Museum in downtown San Diego and check it out!
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Baseball is being celebrated at the San Diego History Center. While the 2026 season gets underway, the Inside/Out exhibit in the museum’s atrium summons happy baseball memories.
Artifacts and ephemera from the San Diego History Center’s collection are front and center. Most of the memorabilia on display concern the San Diego Padres and professional baseball in our city. Tony Gwynn, Jerry Coleman, the San Diego Chicken and others are lovingly remembered.
There are multiple objects from the 1978 Major League Baseball All-Star Game at San Diego Stadium (pre-Jack Murphy Stadium). Padres players Dave Winfield and Rollie Fingers contributed to the National League victory.
I noticed one shelf celebrates Alice “Lefty” Hohlmayer, a longtime Bonita resident who played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League from 1946 to 1951. She was inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame in 2005.
Very cool!
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Tony Bingham is presently the artist in residence at the California Center for the Arts Museum in Escondido. Visitors to the museum have the opportunity to meet Tony and experience his work when he is present. I was privileged to meet him a couple days ago. He loves to interact with curious people!
Tony told me about his fascination with A. E. “Fred” Coleman, a former slave who discovered gold in Julian back in 1869, launching a gold rush. The gold mining camp Coleman City quickly sprang up by what today is named Coleman Creek, a tributary of the San Diego River. Among other accomplishments, A. E. Coleman created a toll road into Julian.
Short-lived Coleman City is now a vanished ghost town, but the legacy of A. E. Coleman remains an important part of African American history in the San Diego region. Tony Bingham’s art honors that history.
Tony, with his art, also honors two African American trailblazers: Albert Robinson and Margaret Tull Robinson. In 1887 they started the Robinson Restaurant and Bakery in Julian. Today the establishment is called the Julian Gold Rush Hotel.
Tony Bingham loves to create images using pinhole photography.
He went up to the property through which Coleman Creek runs and took a series of pinhole photographs, often experimenting with different exposures. Here are some of the results…
The words you see above are the names of different mines that were established around Julian during the gold rush.
Tony has also created clay plates that recall the historic Robinson Hotel & Restaurant. The earthy plates among them were formed using the actual grassy soil along Coleman Creek.
Tony has conjectured what food items the restaurant might have had on its menu, and if any vegetables were grown on location.
He has produced plant music that reflects different vegetables, resulting from bioelectrical activity within a living plant. It was very cool listening to a plant “symphony” from his laptop! The potatoes were quite lively!
Tony Bingham is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator from Birmingham, Alabama. His very unique work invites contemplation. It honors the life and legacy of African Americans.
Perhaps his most notable work is the Praise House, an open-air sculpture at a former plantation in Harpersville, Alabama.
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This is one of the most uplifting and creative exhibitions of art you’re likely to experience. It’s a garden of flowers, trees and animals that was created using Persian carpets! You read that correctly!
This unique exhibition at the museum of the California Center for the Arts, Escondido is titled Maryam Bayat: Unrolling Paradise.
I stepped into the “garden” yesterday during my museum visit. With the sound of birds chirping in the background, I wandered through the plush, colorful foliage and wished there was a “park bench” where I could sit and simply be happy and alive.
In this garden paradise life is good. All cares drop away. From my photos you might understand the wonderful feeling this installation produces. It’s like a comfy living room that has come to life all around you!
The exhibition webpage explains: Unrolling Paradise explores the Persian garden as a living design tradition carried through textiles, memory, and everyday objects. Interdisciplinary artist Maryam Bayat reinterprets centuries-old carpet aesthetics through sculptural works that merge traditional Persian rugs with contemporary form and function.
Raised in Tehran in a family of rug producers and now based in North County San Diego, Bayat draws from inherited craft to create installations that reflect on place, belonging, and cultural continuity. Her woven sculptures—appearing as furniture, abstract trees, and domestic interiors—extend the symbolism of the garden into three-dimensional space, linking ideas of sanctuary to personal and collective memory.
If you tend not to visit museums, this might be the time you consider going. There are several other exhibits, as well, including one that concerns graphics used in computer and video games. Swing on by and have a great time!
Maryam Bayat: Unrolling Paradise can be experienced through Sunday, August 16, 2026, at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido’s museum.
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An exhibit on the hangar deck of the USS Midway Museum honors the approximately 9 million women who stepped forward to meet the nation’s needs during World War II.
Women contributed by serving in the United States military services, and by building the ships, aircraft, ammunition and other equipment necessary to fight the war.
There’s special emphasis on how women helped to build seaplanes and bombers at San Diego’s Consolidated Aircraft Corporation, and how women helped to construct the enormous USS Midway aircraft carrier.
Did you know that by 1945 women made up as much as 40% of the workforce in the nation’s aircraft factories? That was true as well at Consolidated Aircraft.
Did you know that more than 1000 women, working as welders, electricians, machine operators, pipefitters, mechanics and painters helped to construct the USS Midway in just 18 months?
Rosie the Riveter and Wanda the Welder were instrumental in the eventual victory of the Allies!
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With less than a week to go until Major League Baseball returns, it was fun to see the San Diego History Center had a pop-up baseball exhibit in their atrium today. Most of the displays concerned the San Diego Padres. (The team’s Home Opener is at Petco Park next Thursday!)
All sorts of historical photographs and artifacts could be viewed by visitors. There was a fun quiz (I got 3 of 3 questions correct and a high five), plus creative activities for kids.
It was fun to see old photos of Ted Williams, Tony Gwynn and the San Diego Chicken.
I remember listening to Jerry Coleman and Dave Campbell on the radio during the Padres amazing 1984 season. I was a young man way back then. I also enjoyed years of listening to Ted Leitner, and going to games now and then. So many good memories…
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Cool San Diego Sights! 