Who We Are:
As the only contemporary cultural institution in Balboa Park, SDAI nurtures the creation of groundbreaking art by providing a dedicated exhibition space for the artistic talent that resides in Southern California and Northern Baja to collaborate, exhibit, and thrive.
What We Do:
Over the past 77 years, SDAI has grown into a premier contemporary art center delivering access to thousands of residents and visitors to the art we showcase, no matter the viewer’s experience or demographic. Through high quality, interactive programming, educational initiatives and exhibitions, SDAI promotes cultural equity and artistic enrichment within our community and enables diverse audiences to interact with art in meaningful ways.
Advance artists of today.
Reveal culture and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Lead contemporary art in the SoCal/No Baja region.
Engage and Educate underserved populations and the artists of tomorrow.
Summer Camps:
Grades K thru 12: Discover the artist in you!
SDAI Summer Art Camp Programs combine creativity and fun with technology and technique. Campers experiment with contemporary art practices while learning from professional teaching artists. Choose from Printmaking, Public Art and Murals, DIY Magazine making, Photography, and Stop Motion workshops. Early registration is encouraged as we expect these camps to fill up quickly!
www.sandiego-art.org/summer-camp
Artist-in-Residence:
The Matthew J. Mahoney Artist-in-Residence program is named in honor of our dear friend, the prolific and talented artist Matt Mahoney, who passed away in 2017.
Matt was SDAI’s second artist-in-residence, and helped develop and grow this important program that has a significant impact on the lives of emerging artists as they create new, contemporary work.
Event Rentals:
Choose SDAI as a unique wedding or event venue for groups up to 75 people.
For a complete listing of events, exhibitions, and programming please visit : www.sandiego-art.org
Current & Upcoming Exhibitions
Pop-Up Installation: Tra Bouscaren
January 23, 2019 – February 3, 2019
Tra Bouscaren is a post-disciplinary installation artist/neo-cave painter engaged with American spectacle at the intersection of waste culture and the surveillance state. For this pop-up at SDAI, Bouscaren will present a multi-media interactive installation inspired by the ARTS Young Artists in Harmony program and the San Diego/Tijuana border. Currently he serves as Artist in Residence at MOCA Tucson and Visiting Lecturer and Critic for the MFA program at the University of Arizona. Bouscaren’s work has been featured at numerous institutions including Fort Mason Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Greenleaf Gallery in Los Angeles, Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia, and Lincoln Center in New York among others.
The AjA Project presents Collective Voices: The Power of Empathy
January 23, 2019 – February 3, 2019
Collective Voices: The Power of Empathy is focused on youth-organized programming centering around solidarity building, health equity, and a critical examination of mental health as it relates to lived experience and community. This exhibition presents three collaborative pieces titled Emotion Portraits and the Power of Radical Listening, Beyond Borders: Anger, Destruction, and Rebuilding, and A Retrospective: Expectation and Reality. Each of the pieces comes together to unite under a theme of solidarity building among difference focusing in on the theme of mental health.
The mission of the Collective Voices program is to express the pride we have in ourselves, give young Muslim girls a voice, and connect with others to eliminate misconceptions. Collective Voices: The Power of Empathy is a culmination of Collective Voices’ third year of participatory photography programming made possible through a collaboration between The AjA Project and The United Women of East Africa. This program aims to provide East African youth arts programming, provide outlets for creative self-expression, and offer an opportunity to ignite critical conversations around culture and social justice.
A Tribute to Pam Whidden: Models are to Artists Like Flowers are to Bees
January 23, 2019 – February 3, 2019
The human figure has captured the imagination of artists and viewers for centuries. It represents both a tangible and intangible reality; a scientific and spiritual wonder; a microcosm of the macrocosm. Artistic depiction of the human figure allows us to see and appreciate what we already know about ourselves in private in a completely public way. This collaborative interaction between artists and models is a major reason why the human figure is still so central to the creative process.
This exhibition, curated by artists Stephanie and Ken Goldman, highlights the historic impact that model Pam Whidden had on San Diego’s art modeling community.
In the early 1970’s, it was difficult to find good models. Pam was an exception: an expressive sitter with a reliable work ethic. By the 1980’s, Pam not only made a living for herself, but also began training friends to be art-models. Through this entrepreneurial effort, she single-handedly changed the art-modeling world by creating The San Diego Artist Model’s Guild. This new guild solved two major issues: ensuring that models were paid a fair wage by artists and that models would show up on time and work in a professional manner.
In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s Pam became a part of the Athenaeum, working tirelessly by assisting at events, scheduling models, and monitoring the Sunday sketch group which is still active today.
The curators of this exhibition conducted an open call to receive submissions of artwork that depicted Pam during her modeling years. Although the artists vary in style and medium, the subject’s gifts are evident in each depiction, showing the versatility and range of talent in Pam’s modeling and the enthusiastic, expressive responses she evoked from the artists.
Deviate / Landscape
February 16, 2019 – March 24, 2019
Curated by Carlos Castro Arias & Sarah Trujillo-Porter, Deviate / Landscape revolves around contemporary approaches to artmaking that deal with the idea of landscape as a constructed and deconstructed space. The selected artists use painting, video, installation, photography and other mediums to explore landscape. The selected works use landscape as a metaphor for time and transformation but also highlight contemporary political and environmental issues.
Trinh Mai: That We Should Be Heirs
February 16, 2019 – March 24, 2019
That We Should Be Heirs encourages participants to engage in the lost art of letter writing as a method of alleviating burdens and promoting healing. By putting hand to paper and joining one another in this collective activity of personal letter writing, we can share in this intimate process of privately documenting the stories, hardships, and triumphs that connect us all.
Letters written by immigrants and families of immigrants are encouraged. Letters handwritten in participants’ native tongues are welcomed and encouraged. Writings by survivors are encouraged. This project includes on-site activities and off-site workshops during which participants will be asked to write letters to themselves and/or others to pay respect to those who have shared in our heartaches and the approaches we’ve found to quiet our pain.
All writings will be rolled and bound with string, and therefore, will remain private as part of the installation. That We Should Be Heirs aims to offer a hallowed space for the participants to release their burdens and their fears into the art. As more letters are received, the installation will continue to evolve. This project focuses on one of the most profound commonalities that we all have—our desire to heal, our constant search for new ways to alleviate our burdens, our hope to gain victory over fear, and the consistent need to let go of the things that have a way of hardening our hearts.
Visit San Diego Art Institute
Address:
1439 El Prado
San Diego, CA
92101
Phone:
(619) 236-0011
Hours:
Tuesday-Friday 10:00am-5:00pm
Saturday-Sunday 12:00p-5:00pm
From June 23-August 31 open late on Wednesdays from 10:00am-8:00pm
Website:
1439 El Prado, San Diego, CA
