San Diego Museum of Art 100-year timeline

This year, San Diego Museum of Art celebrates its 100th anniversary with a free public party on Feb. 28. But its roots actually stretch back farther than that. Here’s a timeline of the museum’s history.

1915-1916: When the city of San Diego hosted the Panama-California International Exhibition in the newly constructed Balboa Park museum complex around Plaza de Panama, public response to an exhibit of art by California and San Diego artists was so positive, work begins on plans to build a permanent art museum.

1924: Civic leader Appleton Bridges funded the construction of a permanent museum on the plaza to house a municipal art collection. Designed by architect William Templeton Johnson, the new museum was inspired by the Spanish Colonial style used in the 1915 exhibition, but the exterior was supplemented with Spanish Renaissance motifs and life-size sculptures of Spanish Old Master painters Velázquez, Murillo and Zurbarán and coats of arms for San Diego, the United States and Spain.

1925: The San Diego Art Guild and Friends of Art groups merged to form the Fine Arts Society, which is appointed to manage the museum.

San Diego Museum of Art at 100: Honoring the past, with big plans ahead

1926: On Feb. 28, the now-city-owned Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego opened its doors to the public (it was renamed the San Diego Museum of Art in 1978). Its inaugural director is Reginald Poland. During his tenure from 1925-1950, Poland builds the base of the museum’s collection with the help of prominent local families including the Bridges, Huntingtons, Timkens, Spreckels and more.

1942: Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the fear of further attacks on cities lining the Pacific coast led museum officials to ship much of its art collection to the Midwest for safekeeping.

1943-1947: The U.S. Navy requisitioned the museum and turns it into a 423-bed hospital for wounded sailors and Marines returning from World War II. During these years, museum operations were relocated to a Mission Hills mansion owned by museum trustees Frank and May Marcy, where exhibits, classes, films and lectures were held.

1955-1969: Director Warren Beach’s efforts to expand the museum’s art collection exacerbated the growing need for exhibition space. In 1966, a new West Wing building was added, which doubled the museum’s gallery space and includes the James S. Copley Auditorium. The museum also built the outdoor May S. Marcy Sculpture Court. Beach’s successor, Henry Gardiner (1969-1979)m continued to expand the museum’s collection.

1978: The Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego is renamed the San Diego Museum of Art.

1979-1999: Under the leadership of Director Stephen Brezzo, the museum was the beneficiary of three major art donations, a collection of English and French works of art from Ambassador Maxwell Gluck and his wife in 1985; a collection of prints, posters, and paintings by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec given by the Baldwin M. Baldwin Foundation in 1988; and the 1,453-piece collection of Indian and South Asian art given by Edwin Binney III in 1990. Brezzo also produced several blockbuster exhibitions, like one dedicated to Fabergé eggs, that raised the museum’s national profile.

2000-2001: Under the leadership of Director Don Bacigalupi, the Museum Art School was relocated to the rebuilt House of Hospitality, the museum’s rotunda was restored to its 1926 luster and renovations were made to the galleries, gift shop and more.

2004-2009:  New Director Derrick Cartwright expanded the museum’s community outreach, bilingual initiative and publications programs. In 2008, the restoration of the building’s facade was completed. And in 2009, the museum received a significant collection of African, Oceanic and Native American artworks from the Sana Art Foundation.

2010: Roxana Velásquez is hired as the museum’s eight executive director and becomes the first woman to lead the institution. Previously, she directed three major national museums in Mexico City. During her tenure, which continues to this day, she has dramatically expanded the museum’s collections by more than 6,000 pieces.

2016: Art of the Open Air, an installation of seven large-scale sculptures from the permanent collection, was installed in Balboa Park’s Plaza to Panama in an effort to bring the museum’s art and awareness to the public.

March 7, 2023: San Diego Museum of Arts announces it has hired the world-renowned architecture firm Foster + Partners to design a new building to replace the exisiting west wing. Led by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Norman Foster, the company has built many landmark structures at museums around the world, including the Great Court at the British Museum in London.

July 1, 2023: The San Diego Museum of Art merges with its neighbor, the Museum of Photographic Arts. MOPA’s visitorship did not rebound following the COVID-19 pandemic, so its leaders decided the best way to preserve its 10,000-plus-piece collection was to fold it into the San Diego Museum of Arts collection. SDMA continues to maintain the MOPA collection and museum space, just across the Plaza de Panama.

2024: The museum unveiled an early concept proposal for its west wing redesign, which will double the museum’s exhibit space, offer state-of-the-art,  temperature-controlled vaults for art storage and will include multiple food service operations, including a rooftop restaurant. The museum hosted an exhibit of renderings and scale models to get feedback from the public about the design. Responses are overwhelmingly positive, particularly to the news that Panama 66, the popular restaurant and music presenter in the west wing sculpture garden, will stay.

2025: San Diego’s Design Forward Alliance bestowed the west wing concept with its Signature Project Design Award for Museum Renovation. Also, the San Diego architecture firm Safdie Rabines Architects joined with Foster + Partners on the west wing plan.

2026: The museum marks its 100th anniversary with a free public party on Feb. 28. Early this year, the museum will also announce details of its capital campaign to build the new west wing, which is scheduled to break ground in the the second half of 2027.

Source: sdmart.org/mission-history