San Diego Museum of Art

The San Diego Museum of Art is a fine arts museum located in Balboa Park in San Diego, California that houses a broad collection with particular strength in Spanish art. The San Diego Museum of Art opened as The Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego on February 28, 1926 and changed its name to the San Diego Museum of Art in 1978.

The museum building was designed by architects William Templeton Johnson and Robert W. Snyder in a plateresque style to harmonize with existing structures from the Panama–California Exposition of 1915. The dominant feature of the façade is a heavily ornamented door inspired by a doorway at the University of Salamanca.

The Museum's collections are encyclopedic in nature, with pieces ranging in date from 5,000 B.C. to 2001 A.D. The museum's strength is in Spanish works by Murillo, Zurbarán, Cotán, Ribera and El Greco. The museum houses works by Italian masters Giorgione, Giotto, Veronese, Luini and Canaletto. Works by Rubens, Hals and van Dyck represent the Northern European School.