The San Diego Museum of Art

Located in Balboa Park, the museum houses over 35,000 works, including Spanish and Italian Old Masters, South Asian paintings, and 19th- and 20th-century American art.

Planning your visit

The San Diego Museum of Art occupies a 1926 building in Balboa Park whose facade is Spanish Plateresque, modelled on the university at Salamanca, with carved portraits of Spanish painters set into the stone.

The Spanish collection behind it is the strength: El Greco, Zurbarán, Ribera, Murillo and Goya, assembled early and deliberately in a city with strong Spanish and Mexican historical ties.

The South Asian holdings, particularly Indian miniature paintings from the Rajput and Mughal courts, are among the more significant in the United States and were built from a major donation.

American painting and sculpture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries fill the remaining galleries, and contemporary exhibitions rotate.

Balboa Park holds around seventeen museums, and multi-attraction passes generally make sense.

Allow ninety minutes. Bookable options include skip-the-line private guided tours. Current availability is shown below.