August 2, 2025–February 8, 2026     Experience the powerful sculptures of Eduardo Chillida (1924–2002) in this exhibition marking the one-hundred-year anniversary of his birth. A visionary artist, Chillida’s body of work is closely linked to the landscape and traditions of his Basque Country homeland in northern Spain and frequently invokes the earth, sea, wind, and light, as well as…

March 6–June 1, 2025   This installation pays tribute to a passing generation of Minimalist artists, most notably Frank Stella (1936–2024). Highlighting the Museum’s major Stella, Flin Flon VIII (1970), the selection includes a broad range of work from diverse media, many of which have not been on view before.  Minimalism was both an extension and a rejection of Abstract…

February 15–August 10, 2025     Printmaking has played a central role in the development of the visual arts in modern Mexico, from early devotional engravings of the 1600s to the satirical lithographs of José Guadalupe Posada around 1900. The Muralist movement was inspired by Posada’s “calaveras” (animated skeletons), the Virgin of Guadalupe, and other Christian and nationalist images made…

March 22, 2025–March 21, 2027     A special group of loans from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, will afford visitors to The San Diego Museum of Art an extraordinary view of Dutch society and artistic traditions in the 17th century. By 1600, the Dutch Republic had begun to emerge as an international economic powerhouse. A seafaring nation, albeit…

February 22, 2025–Ongoing     Painting in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century often focused on solitary, contemplative experiences. These were a departure from the very dramatic or “sublime” landscapes of the earlier part of the nineteenth century, and instead of awe or fear, they capture a sense of calm and stillness, even a spiritual connection…

February 8–July 27, 2025 Dutch photographer Ruud van Empel (b. 1958) asks us to look at the world as if for the first time. Hovering between reality and artifice, his photographs offer an impossible density of detail and intensity of color. Van Empel creates these pictures over hundreds and even thousands of hours, constructing them digitally by combining fragments of…

February 1–July 13, 2025   “Although the result is obtained by chemical means, the little work it entails will greatly please ladies.” So wrote one of photography’s inventors, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1787–1851), about his eponymous daguerreotype in 1839. Daguerre’s words, which associate women with idleness, are clearly misogynistic. Yet in a backhanded way, Daguerre predicted the pivotal role women would play…

October 19, 2024–August 10, 2025       “It is a quest for an architecture of light and lightness, inspired by nature which is about the quality of life as well as being eco-friendly.” —Norman Foster   Norman Foster (British, b. 1935), is one of the most esteemed international architects of our time, with projects worldwide. Among innumerable accolades, he…

July 27, 2024–January 26, 2025     With a sharp wit, William Gropper (1897–1977) satirized the absurdities and injustices of American political life. Gropper grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where his mother supported the family by working as a seamstress in a sweatshop. This early experience informed Gropper’s commitment to social change, and in thousands of…

June 29, 2024–January 12, 2025 A voracious photographer who shot hundreds of thousands of pictures over his lifetime, Garry Winogrand (1928–1984) was a pivotal figure in twentieth-century American photography. Winogrand used his lightweight Leica camera athletically, moving in and out of crowds—from Manhattan streets to Texas football fields—as he honed an impulsive yet sophisticated sense of composition. With their wide-angle…