San Diego Museum of Art is turning 100 in 2026. We take a look back

San Diego Museum of Art is readying to celebrate its centennial with hopes of more growth in the next 100 years. 

But its past century included triumphs and tribulations that will inform the future. Here’s a look back at San Diego’s oldest and largest art museum, which boasts 32,000 works and a footprint of 148,000 square feet (that’s about as big as 2.5 football fields) in Balboa Park.

A temple of art

The San Diego Museum of Art was founded after the positive response to an art exhibit at the 1915 Panama-California International Exposition. That exhibit held 19th and 20th century European and American paintings, with some contributions from local artists.

City leaders wanted a permanent municipal art gallery that promoted San Diego as a growing cultural center.

With a site secured in Balboa Park, where the exposition was held, architect William Templeton Johnson took the Spanish Colonial architecture of the exposition a step further by emulating Spanish Renaissance architecture. The façade, with life-size sculptures of Spanish painters, directly harkened to the Cathedral of Valladolid in Spain. 

According to SDMA’s chief curator Anita Feldman, the cathedral-inspired entrance was similar to other European and American museums where Greco-Roman features, including wide stairs to the entrance, columns and statues, made them feel like a temple. A façade exceeding the height of the building and then a tiny door combined to make the museum seem deceptively outsized.

This served a purpose: The elevated grandeur was meant to lead to an elevated spiritual experience viewing art inside.

Museum philosophy has changed much since then, with even older institutions trying to make their collections and buildings more accessible.

“We still want you to have a good experience, but it doesn’t have to be like a temple,” Feldman said. “The museum is now a community cultural center. It’s open to everyone. It’s not this elitist thing.”

The museum opened on Feb. 28, 1926 as the Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego to exhibit contemporary paintings and sculpture – a fact which surprises residents who associate the museum with its impressive collection of historic European paintings. Those were donated later.

“When the museum opened in 1926, it was showing art that was contemporary at the time,” Feldman said. “But it is also true at the same time, we do have this core collection of old master paintings, which is incredible for San Diego.”

SDMA – its beginnings and art on view

A period of challenge

Some aspects of the building and its surrounding area have been lost to time. Before the museum was even built, a wooden loggia open to the outdoors while sheltering the public stood as tall as the other buildings in Balboa Park.

A reflecting pond once filled the empty space now occupied by the Plaza de Panama, as seen in photos in the 1930s.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, some of SDMA’s masterwork paintings were shipped to museums in the Midwest for safekeeping. Still, it stayed open until 1943.

The biggest potential loss came during World War II when the museum was requisitioned by the Navy, like all cultural institutions in Balboa Park, leaving it suddenly homeless. For four years, SDMA was transformed into a hospital, with a full surgery suite, X-ray facilities and a morgue, according to Feldman.

Thankfully, museum trustees Frank and May Marcy donated a mansion in Mission Hills to keep the remaining art open to the public. The huge home on Sunset Boulevard was converted into a gallery that hosted exhibits, classes, films, lectures and other activities run by the Fine Arts Society.

Although staff from the era may no longer be alive, the effort it took to move the collection to Mission Hills and the Midwest may be instructive with another major construction project on the horizon, of a new West Wing. That means the current sculpture garden and 32,000-piece collection once again will have to temporarily find a new residence.

Major expansion

Decades after its return to Balboa Park, SDMA entered a period of expansion through the ‘60s and ‘70s, with new gallery space and major donations.

SDMA’s current West Wing was completed in 1966. Other construction included the May S. Marcy Sculpture Court, named after the woman who kept the museum open in Mission Hills during WWII. An east wing was added in 1974.

With the additional gallery space and new donations of works outside of the categories of fine paintings and sculpture, the Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego rebranded in 1978, becoming the San Diego Museum of Art in 1978.

While the expansion slowed, it never really stopped. The museum added educational and community outreach programs, acquired a major collection of African, Oceanic and Native American artworks, and in 2020, merged with another Balboa Park art institution, the Museum of Photographic Arts.

The next possible expansion is the new West Wing, a proposal which would double SDMA’s gallery space and make its collection more accessible to art aficionados and the curious alike.

Look for more on SDMA ahead of the centennial exhibit, which opens Jan. 24. The series will continue with details on the West Wing expansion proposal and the museum’s planned events to celebrate the centennial.

In addition to an interview with Anita Feldman, the timeline for this article was based on SDMA’s mission and history page, at sdmart.org/mission-history.