Established | 1926 |
---|---|
Location | 1450 El Prado in Balboa Park, San Diego, California, US |
Coordinates | 32°43′56″N117°09′02″W / 32.7322°N 117.1505°W |
Type | Art Museum |
Website | sdmart.org |
TheSan Diego Museum of Art is a fine arts museum in Balboa Park in San Diego, California, that houses a broad collection with particular strength in Spanish art. It opened as the Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego on February 28, 1926, and changed to its current name in 1978. [1] [2] The official Balboa Park website calls it "the region's oldest and largest art museum". [3] Nearly half a million people visit the museum each year. [4]
The museum building was designed by architects William Templeton Johnson and Robert W. Snyder in a plateresque style to harmonize with existing structures from the Panama–California Exposition of 1915. [1] [5] The dominant feature of the façade is a heavily ornamented door inspired by a doorway at the University of Salamanca. [1] The Cathedral of Valladolid also influenced the museum's exterior design, and the architects derived interior motifs from the Santa Cruz Hospital of Toledo, Spain. [2] The original construction took two years. [2] Sponsor Appleton S. Bridges donated the building to the City of San Diego upon its completion. [2] In 1966 the museum added a west wing and a sculpture court which doubled its size, and an east wing in 1974 further increased its exhibition space. [1] [2] Plans are underway for a renovation to the rotunda, sculpture garden, façade, auditorium, and other features. [2]
The museum's collections are encyclopedic in nature, with pieces ranging in date from 5000 BC to 2012 AD. The museum's strength is in Spanish works by Murillo, Zurbarán, Cotán, Ribera and El Greco. Much of the museum's old master collection was donated by sisters Anne, Amy, and Irene Putnam. [1] The museum's first major acquisition was the 1939 purchase of Francisco Goya's El Marques de Sofraga, which had belonged to a private family collection until that time and had never before been on public exhibition. [1] The Putnam sisters provided financial backing for the purchase. [1] The following year, director Reginald Poland acquired a portrait by Giovanni Bellini for the museum's collection. [1] Then in 1941 the museum purchased a Diego Velázquez portrait of the Infanta Margarita of Spain, which was possibly a study for a larger portrait of her in Vienna. [1] Other major benefactors during the museum's first quarter century were Archer M. Huntington and Mr. and Mrs. Henry Timken, [2] whose small art collection is housed in the nearby Timken Museum of Art, established in 1965. In 2012, the Museum of Art received 48 German Expressionist paintings, drawings and prints from a range of artists, including Otto Dix, Egon Schiele, Alexej von Jawlensky, Gabriele Münter and Gustav Klimt from the collection of Vance E. Kondon and his wife Elisabeth Giesberger. [6]
The museum houses works by Italian masters Giorgione, Giambattista Pittoni, Giotto, Veronese, Luini and Canaletto. Works by Rubens, Hals and van Dyck represent the Northern European School. The museum regularly hosts touring exhibits and has lately been working to display its standard collection in new ways, including an upstairs gallery discussing information which can be gathered by looking on the back of the canvas. The exhibition is complemented with a large collection of images, including portraits, Arnold Newman's work, and Mexican landscapes from the early twentieth century. [7]
Important special exhibitions that the museum has hosted include The Precious Legacy (1984). [8]
In 2024, the exhibit "Wonders of Creation: Art, Science, and Innovation in the Islamic World" features works spanning 13 centuries that show the intersection of art and science. [9]
In 2010, the San Diego Museum of Art in conjunction with the Agitprop gallery created The Summer Salon Series. The program, curated by Alexander Jarman and David White, featured local emerging artists who presented and performed temporary art works and workshops in direct response to the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition. Each of the ten presentations involved Contemporary Artists' responses to the Modern Art on display in the museum.
Each April since 1981 the Museum hosts its major fundraiser, "Art Alive". Floral designers use flowers and other organic materials to express their interpretation of a work of art from the Museum's permanent collection. For four days the resulting creations are displayed next to the art work that inspired them. [10] The museum also hosts events such as "Art after Hours" and "Culture and Cocktails", which encourage attendees to sample the collection into the evening during extended opening hours or partake in social events centered in the gallery.
Alexej Georgewitsch von Jawlensky, surname also spelt as Yavlensky, was a Russian expressionist painter active in Germany. He was a key member of the New Munich Artist's Association, Der Blaue Reiter group and later Die Blaue Vier.
The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía is Spain's national museum of 20th-century art. The museum was officially inaugurated on September 10, 1992, and is named for Queen Sofía. It is located in Madrid, near the Atocha train and metro stations, at the southern end of the so-called Golden Triangle of Art.
Albert Bierstadt was a German American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. He joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion to paint the scenes. He was not the first artist to record the sites, but he was the foremost painter of them for the remainder of the 19th century.
Giovanni Battista Moroni was an Italian painter of the Mannerism. He also is called Giambattista Moroni. Best known for his elegantly realistic portraits of the local nobility and clergy, he is considered one of the great portrait painters of the Cinquecento.
Der Blaue Reiter was a group of artists and a designation by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc for their exhibition and publication activities, in which both artists acted as sole editors in the almanac of the same name. The editorial team organized two exhibitions in Munich in 1911 and 1912 to demonstrate their art-theoretical ideas based on the works of art exhibited. Traveling exhibitions in German and other European cities followed. The Blue Rider disbanded at the start of World War I in 1914.
The Museum Wiesbaden is a two-branch museum of art and natural history in the Hessian capital of Wiesbaden, Germany. It is one of the three Hessian State museums, in addition to the museums in Kassel and Darmstadt.
The Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA) is a museum in Balboa Park in San Diego, California. First founded in 1974, MOPA opened in 1983. MOPA is one of three museums in the US dedicated exclusively to the collection and preservation of photography, with a mission to inspire, educate and engage the broadest possible audience through the presentation, collection, and preservation of photography, film and video. The museum's address is 1649 El Prado, San Diego, CA, 92101.
The San Diego Natural History Museum is a museum in Balboa Park in San Diego, California. It was founded in 1874 as the San Diego Society of Natural History. It is the second oldest scientific institution west of the Mississippi and the oldest in Southern California. The present location of the museum was dedicated on January 14, 1933. A major addition to the museum was dedicated in April 2001, doubling exhibit space.
William Templeton Johnson was a notable San Diego architect. He was a fellow to the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1939.
The Timken Museum of Art is a fine art museum in Balboa Park in San Diego, California, close to The San Diego Museum of Art. It was established in 1965.
The Mingei International Museum is a non-profit public institution in Balboa Park in San Diego, California, that collects, conserves and exhibits folk art, craft and design. The museum was founded in 1974, and its building opened in 1978. The word mingei, meaning 'art of the people,' was coined by the Japanese scholar Dr. Sōetsu Yanagi by combining the Japanese words for all people and art.
Sarah Miriam Peale was an American portrait painter, considered the first American woman to succeed as a professional artist. One of a family of artists of whom her uncle Charles Willson Peale was the most illustrious, Sarah Peale painted portraits mainly of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. notables, politicians, and military figures. Lafayette sat for her four times.
Lizzie Plummer Bliss, known as Lillie P. Bliss, was an American art collector and patron. At the beginning of the 20th century, she was one of the leading collectors of modern art in New York. One of the lenders to the landmark Armory Show in 1913, she also contributed to other exhibitions concerned with raising public awareness of modern art. In 1929, she played an essential role in the founding of the Museum of Modern Art. After her death, 150 works of art from her collection served as a foundation to the museum and formed the basis of the in-house collection. These included works by artists such as Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani.
Rinaldo Cuneo, was an American artist known for his landscape paintings and murals. He was dubbed "the Painter of San Francisco".
Galka Scheyer was a German-American painter, art dealer, art collector, and teacher. She was the founder of the "Blue Four," an artists' group that consisted of Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Alexej von Jawlensky.
The Vision of Saint Anthony of Padua or Saint Anthony with the Christ Child is an oil on canvas painting by the Italian artist Giambattista Pittoni, completed in August 1730 in Venice. It is now in the San Diego Museum of Art in California, which acquired it in 1948.
Hanna Bekker vom Rath was a German painter, collector, patron and gallerist.
Portrait of a Young Man in Armor is a c. 1620 oil painting on canvas by Peter Paul Rubens. it his held at the Timken Museum of Art, in San Diego.
William Bryan Jordan Jr. was an American art historian who facilitated acquisitions, curated exhibitions, and authored publications on Spanish artists and still life paintings, particularly from the Golden Age.