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) to public recreational usage. No further activity took place until 1845, when a survey was done by Henry D. Fitch to map the 47,000 acres. Three years later, the Mexican government was forced by the Mexican–American War to cede Alta California, including San Diego, to the United States. On February 15, 1868, the city's Board of Trustees was asked to create a public park out of two plots of land just northeast of the growing urban center of "New Town"—present-day Downtown San Diego. The request was made by one of the Trustees, E. W. Morse, who had picked the site