Masterpiece Minute Podcast
This 60-second weekly podcast series shares the fascinating story, historical context, and significance behind important works in the SDMA collection. New episodes are available every other Friday at 10:00 a.m. on the SDMA app or online.
SDMA 360: A Virtual Gallery Experience
Step inside the Museum from anywhere! Enjoy 360-degree scans of your favorite galleries, zoom in to see art details, and read full label text in both English and Spanish, all from the comfort of home.
Explore the SDMA 360: A Virtual Gallery Experience.
SDMA App
Download our app from the App Store or Google Play to virtually explore our galleries via 360, view insider stories, listen or read about works in our collection, and more!
Virtual Tours
The Museum’s popular docent tours are now available virtually. Each tour will last approximately 50 minutes and be offered on the Zoom platform. Prior registration for these FREE tours is required.
Go to the Docent Tours webpage to see all the available virtual tour topics and upcoming schedule.
SDMA at Play
Join us for fun art activities for all ages! The SDMA Education team is whipping up at-home activities for emerging and established art students.
See all the SDMA at Play activities and share your creations with us on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter using #SDMAatPlay.
Art Tutorials
Explore new art techniques with Museum educators. SDMA Art Tutorials are a series of regular instructional videos that demonstrate a new art skill, technique, or material inspired by works of art in the Museum’s permanent collection. Whether you’re a beginner or a master artist, come learn from Museum educators with SDMA Art Tutorials!
Watch SDMA Art Tutorials and try something new.
Virtual SDMA+ Performances
Virtual SDMA+ are unique online experiences offered by The San Diego Museum of Art in collaboration with other local arts institutions to inspire a robust appreciation of the arts and a deeper exploration of the SDMA permanent collection.
Learn more about Virtual SDMA+ and see the schedule of performances.
Augmented Reality
See art come to life with augmented reality. Download the free SDMA app and experience the Museum in a whole new way!
UT Artwork of the Week
A featured artwork of the week by The San Diego Union-Tribune, The White Flower (White Trumpet Flower) by Georgia O’Keeffe is one of the Museum’s most popular pieces. Learn more about this important painting from Roxana Velásquez, Maruja Baldwin Executive Director.
Lectures, Talks, Performances
Visit our YouTube Channel to join us on informative ArtStops, watch performances inspired by works of art, sit in on lectures, and learn about collection highlights.
Spanish Art Resources
Explore the Museum’s robust collection of Spanish art, including works by El Greco, Juan Sánchez Cotán, Francisco de Zurbarán, and many more. See the digital content specific to Spanish art at the Museum.
This episode of Masterpiece Minute is brought to you in part by the Tourist Office of Spain.
Art Alive
The first-ever Virtual Art Alive 2020 shared behind-the-scenes views and blooms through the years, dancing and cocktails at Virtual Bloom Bash, hands-on art opportunities, and more than 50 floral interpretations inspired by the SDMA collection.
Art Alive 2022 returns to the Museum with a kaleidoscope of colorful floral arrangements interpreting great works of art, four days of fun-filled events, and the first look at an extraordinary new exhibition. Celebrate the return of Art Alive April 28–May 1, 2021. Join us this spring to enjoy an immersive fusion of flowers and art and show your support for the arts in your community!
Save the date for Art Alive 2022!
Recommended Readings
See what we are reading by taking a look at the titles of past Art of Reading Book Club lists:
- How to Paint a Dead Man, by Sarah Hall shares four stories that intertwine thematically to create a pure discourse concerning art, love, death, and loss.
- The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, by Stephen Greenblatt is an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery. Learn how one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it.
- The Art Forger: A Novel, by B.A. Shapiro is a thrilling novel about seeing—and not seeing—the secrets that lie beneath the canvas.
- Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling, by Ross King is the story of how Michelangelo, against all odds, created the masterpiece that has ever since adorned the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
- Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay tells the story of how colors were made throughout history.
- Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton is an Art of Reading Book Club favorite about contemporary artists.
- The Hare with the Amber Eyes: A Family’s Century of Art & Loss by Edmund deWaal is about a netsuke owned by a formerly well off 19th/early 20th century family.
- My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk is a murder mystery that talks about 17th century Indian miniature painting through one of the artists.
A Special Message from Roxana Velásquez, Maruja Baldwin Executive Director
A special video message from Roxana Velásquez, Maruja Baldwin Executive Director of The San Diego Museum of Art. As we face new challenges and take creative opportunities during the COVID-19 pandemic, art can guide us through crisis. It always has and will continue to do so.
Un mensaje especial e invitación a disfrutar el museo de manera virtual de Roxana Velásquez, Maruja Baldwin Executive Director of The San Diego Museum of Art.
Featured: Seymour Pearlstein. Toby’s Summer #6, undated. Oil on canvas. Gift of the American Academy and Institute of Arts & Letters, New York: Hassam and Speicher Funds, 1978.11. | Giorgione (Giorgio da Castelfranco). Portrait of a Man (detail), 1506. Oil on panel. Gift of Anne R. and Amy Putnam, 1941.100. |Manny Farber (AKA Emanuel Farber). Ad Sheet with Yellow Thayer Box (detail), 1978. Oil on canvas. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Norton S. Walbridge, 2001.39. | Winslow Homer. Art–Students and Copyists in the Louvre Gallery, Paris (detail), January 11, 1868. Engraving. Bequest of Myra Gentner, 2001.77. | Ivan Messenger. Moment Musical (detail), undated. Lithograph. Museum purchase with funds provided by Alice Klauber, 1948.10. | Frantisek Kupka. Blue Space, ca. 1912. Oil on canvas. Museum purchase through the Earle W. Grant Endowment Fund, 1978.4. | Georgia O’Keeffe. The White Flower (White Trumpet Flower) (detail), 1932. Oil on canvas. Gift of Mrs. Inez Grant Parker in memory of Earle W. Grant, 1971.12. | Guy Pène du Bois. Chanticleer (detail), 1922. Oil on canvas. Museum purchase with funds from the Helen M. Towle Bequest, 1936.15. | Juan Sánchez Cotán. Still Life with Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber (detail), ca. 1602. Oil on canvas. Gift of Anne R. and Amy Putnam, 1945.43 | Henri Matisse (AKA Henri Emile Benoît Matisse). Bouquet (detail), 1916-1917. Oil on canvas. Gift of M. A. Wertheimer from the collection of his late wife, Annetta Salz Wertheimer, 1934.77. | Henri Matisse (AKA Henri Emile Benoît Matisse). Reader with Bouquet of Roses (dtail), 1925. Lithograph. Gift of Mrs. Saidie A. May, 1935.6.
