Giambattista Piranesi (1720-1778) was a printmaker, architect, antiquarian, art dealer, theorist, and designer—one of the foremost artistic personalities of the 18th century, whose views of Rome remain the city’s defining image. Fresh, thought-provoking, and innovative, Piranesi, Rome, and the Arts of Design sets out to show the range of the artist’s genius in a 21st-century approach to his creative endeavors….

Presented in conjunction with Arnold Newman: Masterclass and the Summer Break 2013 festival, Double Portraits is an intervention into the Museum’s Permanent Collection. Featuring works by Jess T. Dugan, Goshka Macuga, Dulce Pinzón, Kurt Simonson, and Jaimie Warren, this spotlight exhibition situates contemporary photography alongside paintings from the 16th through early 20th centuries on view in the Museum’s European Art…

This Permanent Collection installation is presented as a complement to the temporary exhibition Arnold Newman: Masterclass. Divided between two main sections, the installation presents recent acquisitions in photography and works by artists portrayed in Newman’s photographs. The Museum continues to grow its Permanent Collection of photography. This presentation of recent acquisitions focuses on photographers active in Mexico and the United…

With great sensitivity and care, Arnold Newman (1918–2006) incorporated the personal environment, the work, and the intellectual background of the subject in his photographs. For Newman, creating a successful portrait was a question of camera, lighting, film, and the cropping of a picture. His metaphorical studies of famous artists, creative professionals, scientists, intellectuals, and statesmen are formally and conceptually balanced…

Architecture and Planning at The San Diego Museum of Art and in Balboa Park Recently, numerous public and private dialogues have addressed the future of Balboa Park, particularly in anticipation of the upcoming 2015 Centennial Celebration. Housed in Gallery One—the future home of the Museum’s Welcome Center—Looking Towards 2015 presents projects that draw attention to smaller, yet no less important,…

This exhibition examines the myriad ways in which women have been represented in relation to war and industry in modern and contemporary art created in the United States. During the twentieth century, both the advent of war and increased industrialization, have led to major changes in the lives of women: their roles in their families, the way in which they…

Noah Doely produces places in his work. His environments urge the viewer to reconsider their own place within history and their relationship to the subject matter. By choosing caves as a source of inspiration for this new body of photographs entitled, Above & Below, Doely reinforces the notion of universalism as these photographs remain distanced from a particular culture or…

Muxima Alfredo Jaar’s Muxima (2005) brings together diverse ideas and significant cultural traditions as envisioned by one of the most important contemporary artists working today. A popular Angolan folksong served as the source of inspiration for this work. Jaar, born in Chile, describes the work as a cinematic elegy to the people of Angola and his film was inspired by…

The story of Sorolla and America begins in 1893, with Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida‘s prize-winning submission to the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. On the heels of this success, and a triumph at the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1900, Sorolla would be invited by the philanthropist and collector Archer Milton Huntington to show his work at the Hispanic Society in…

Robert Henri and the Spirit of Spain Spanish Sojourns: Robert Henri and the Spirit of Spain is the first museum exhibition dedicated to the Spanish paintings of Robert Henri (1865-1929), one of the most influential American artists of the early twentieth century. Henri traveled to Spain seven times between 1900 and 1926, more than any other foreign destination, and produced…