San Diego Museum of Art San Diego Museum of Art The San Diego Museum of Art is a fine arts museum located at 1450 El Prado 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 official Balboa Park website calls the San Diego Museum of Art "the region's oldest and largest art museum". Nearly half a million people visit the museum each year.
Balboa Park (San Diego) landscaped the park we would have a beautiful place there now and not a long row of ramshackle firetraps." Several proposals were developed for converting buildings to museums and several groups attempted to have some of the park land sold to finance other projects. During both the Great War and World War II, the park was handed over to the Department of the Navy to be used as a barracks and training ground and was an extension of Naval Medical Center San Diego. By 1917, after $30,000 in repairs and modifications were made to the original buildings, over 5,000 U.S.