Previous Exhibition American Artists from the Russian Empire features nearly 70 paintings and sculptures by many of the best-known artists working in America in the postwar period, among them Louise Nevelson, Jules Olitsky, Mark Rothko, and Ben Shahn. The exhibit  presents a fascinating foray into the work of artists of Russian descent and training who left the Russian Empire before…

Making the connection between Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Alexander Calder. “Seeing a San Diego Museum of Art room filled with Joan Miros reminded me of Radiohead’s experimental journeys through the subconscious. But livelier.” – Kelli Dailey, San Diego Tribune This exhibition showcases nearly 50 works by three of the greatest twentieth-century artists. The selections come from The San Diego…

Curated by George Ellis, director emeritus of the Honolulu Academy of Arts, Oceanic Art: A Celebration of Form features 97 three-dimensional works, primarily from Melanesia and Polynesia, and objects from Micronesia and Taiwan. Works on view come from three major California collections: the renowned personal collections of Valerie Franklin and Edward and Mina Smith,, as well as the extensive holdings…

Photographs by Hugo Brehme from the Colburn Collection Many foreign artists traveled to Mexico to glean inspiration from the culture and landscapes of the country. A German-born photographer, Brehme contributed immensely to the development of modern photography in Mexico. Like all foreign artists who traveled to the country, Brehme saw the culture and the landscape from a removed vantage point….

The groundbreaking exhibition Joaquín Torres-García: Constructing Abstraction with Wood explores the work of one of the most influential artists to have emerged from Latin America. A charismatic figure in the early twentieth-century international art scene, Torres-García exhibited with the most famous artists of his time, including Antonio Gaudí and Pablo Picasso in Spain; Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg in…

Born in Tijuana, Mexico, in 1971, Hugo Crosthwaite spent his formative years in Rosarito, Mexico, and earned a degree from San Diego State University. Now based in New York City, Crosthwaite creates large-scale graphite and charcoal drawings that are quickly gaining international attention. The San Diego Museum of Art presents a solo exhibition of Crosthwaite’s works with an emphasis on…

Photographs from the Colburn Collection In the Age of Revolution presents photography of Mexico created by foreign photographers both before and after the time of the Mexican Revolution. The Mexican Revolution resulted in tremendous loss of life and brought great destruction to the communities throughout the country. While the time frame of the Revolution is traditionally conceived as 1910–1920, in…

European Prints of the Late Renaissance The style today known as Mannerism became the common currency of artists across Europe in the last decades of the sixteenth century. Characterized by elegantly drawn figures, complicated compositions, exquisite grace, and perhaps, above all, by an extraordinary degree of artistic self-consciousness, Mannerism has rightly been labeled “the stylish style”. One modern critic compared…

The Museum’s Collection Revisited The new presentation of these paintings is intended to reflect a broader campaign of new research on SDMA’s collections. Late in 2008, the Museum’s galleries of European art underwent their first major rotation in over a decade. The new installation highlights some of the museum’s familiar masterpieces—Giorgione’s Portrait of a Man (ca. 1506), or Juan Sánchez…

Mortals and Myths in Ancient Greece Heroes have played an integral part in all cultures since ancient times. Whether heroes  are superhuman protagonists of Greek myths or average individuals who rise above the ordinary, they are admired, emulated, and sometimes even worshipped. This exhibition, organized by the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, features more than 100 objects from European and…