Throughout February, experience the region’s rich cultural offerings during the annual San Diego Museum Month. Discover the story of San Diego through diverse museums, historic sites, gardens, zoos/aquariums, and more. Even while museums are closed, you can enjoy live events, on-demand virtual tours, DIY activities you can do at home, and other special San Diego museum moments.
Find different ways to engage with a new museum each day, from film festival Q&A sessions to lessons about falconry. Below are 7 unique offerings that should be included in your San Diego Museum Month schedule.
Museum of Photographic Arts
Engage in live Q&A sessions after watching thought-provoking films of the 2021 San Diego Human Rights Watch Film Festival, hosted virtually by the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park. View A Reckoning in Boston before joining in a lively digital discussion. The film brings to light the foundations of systemic racism in one community that has spanned generations. Learn how transformation, healing and social change begins within each of us.
San Diego Archaeological Center
Learn about the Maya civilization and their cave rituals in a Living Room Lecture: Ancient Maya Cave Rituals, a program of the San Diego Archaeological Center in Escondido. Anthropological archaeologist Dr. Jon Spenard will discuss his ongoing research in Belize. Held via Zoom, the event will focus on understanding the relationship between elaborate cave rituals and the ancient Maya collapse.
San Diego Natural History Museum
Have you ever wanted to meet a raptor? Now is your chance with the Live Lesson: Eat, Prey, Fly, an offering of the San Diego Natural History Museum in Balboa Park. The museum’s Lead Educator Ashton Huge will host a special conversation with falconer Bob Gordon. Meet Bob’s companion, a Harris’ hawk named Huxley. They will teach you about regional birds of prey along with the art of falconry.
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
Explore the medium of lithography through the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego’s online exhibition, Experiments on Stone: Four Women Artists from the Tamarind Lithography Workshop. The exhibition explores prints produced by Anni Albers, Ruth Asawa, Gego, and Louise Nevelson at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles during the 1960s. The workshop was an essential site for experimentation and collaboration between L.A. artists and printers during the turbulent decade.
Visions Art Museum
Enjoy three new virtual exhibitions at the Visions Art Museum in historic Liberty Station. Connecting Threads tells stories focusing on the vulnerability of the natural world and our place in it. In Polar Expressions, view strikingly beautiful contemporary quilts by Sandra Meech, whose career was inspired by the Arctic landscape and Inuit life. Shifting Tides: Convergence in Cloth focuses on the current state and marvelous natural beauty of the Pacific Ocean ecosystem, and the human activities that both sustain and threaten oceanic life.
San Diego History Center
Celebrate Black History Month with the new exhibit, Celebrate San Diego: Black History & Heritage, at the San Diego History Center in Balboa Park. Discover the rich history of Black San Diego and Black San Diegans. Be a participant of this continually evolving and dynamic exhibit. The display includes photos and a historical timeline dating back to the 1700s. Learn about Black San Diegans like Don Dio Pico who was California’s last governor under Mexican rule. His family is known to have Spanish, Indian and African ancestry.
Lux Art Institute
Check out the outdoor exhibition [Glyph] at the Lux Art Institute in Encinitas. Lux artist-in-residence Beatriz Cortez collaborated with L.A.-based artists on this striking artistic creation. The title [Glyph] evokes the sacred subterranean snake of massive proportions whose curved sections of its body transform and shape the surrounding land and mountains in the horizon. The exhibit is free for public viewing.