21 Museums to Explore in San Diego County

Southern tip of the Point Loma Peninsula. It commemorates the landing of Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo at San Diego Bay on September 28, 1542. This event marked the first time a European expedition had set foot on what later became the West Coast of the United States.

The Comic-Con Museum operates differently than most museums. Instead of a set of permanent collections accented by one or two rotating exhibits, the Comic-Con Museum focuses on a constant stream of new and ever-changing exhibits, requiring flexible and adaptable spaces to accommodate a wide variety of creative art forms. The Comic-Con Museum will encourage an appreciation of comics and related popular arts through exhibits, programs and events drawn from across the Comic-Con universe.

This is the only Museum in the world dedicated to United States Marine Corps aviation, with the largest and most complete collection of vintage aircraft flown by Marine pilots in the world. The museum contains exhibits and artifacts relating to the history and legacy of United States Marine Corps Aviation. The outdoor exhibits include 31 historical aircraft, multiple military vehicles and equipment.

The Junípero Serra Museum, in Presidio Park, is one of the most familiar landmarks in San Diego. The Museum exhibits archeological finds, historic objects, and reference materials related to Spanish colonization and the early history of California and provides educational programs about the Spanish, Mexican and indigenous heritage of the San Diego region.

Established in 1948, it preserves one of the largest collections of historic sea vessels in the United States. The centerpiece of the museum's collection is the Star of India, an 1863 ironbark.

Mingei International Museum preserves and exhibits folk art, craft and design from all eras and cultures of the world. Its collection now comprises more than 26,000 objects of folk art, craft and design from 141 countries. The collections contain artifacts from the 3rd century BCE to the present day and include objects as diverse as ancient clay vessels and 21st-century Venetian glass.

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, in San Diego, California, US, is an art museum focused on the collection, preservation, exhibition, and interpretation of works of art from 1950 to the present.

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego offers access to the very best art of our time at two iconic locations. While the La Jolla location is currently closed for a major renovation and expansion project, the downtown location serves as MCASD's primary hub of activity. The Museum of Contemporary Art has a nearly 5,500-object collection of post-World War II art that includes key pieces by color field painter Ellsworth Kelly.

This is one of the only museums in the country dedicated exclusively to the photographic arts, presenting work by some of the world's most celebrated photographers and cinematographers. Its mission is to inspire, educate and engage the broadest possible audience through the presentation, collection, and preservation of photography, film and video.

A state protected historical park commemorating the early days of the City of San Diego and includes many historic buildings from the period 1820 to 1870.

An aviation and space exploration museum containing many original and reproductions of historic aircraft and spacecraft.

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The San Diego History Center is a museum showcasing the history of San Diego, located in the city's Balboa Park. It also maintains a research library and archives serving residents, scholars, students and researchers.

This is the world's largest accredited model railroad museum. This unique museum contains five enormous scale model layouts depicting railroads of the Southwest in O, HO, and N scales. Its mission is to collect, preserve and present the heritage of American railroading using educational programs, displays, toy trains, and scale models of California railroads.

This anthropology museum's cultural resources and permanent exhibits focus on the pre-Columbian history of the western Americas, with materials drawn from Native American cultures of the Southern California region, and Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Maya. The museum also holds one of the most important collections of Ancient Egyptian antiquities in the United States, which includes burial masks, figurines, and seven painted wooden coffins. The most extraordinary of these is an extremely

The museum located in Balboa Park. It was founded in 1874 as the San Diego Society of Natural History. It is the second oldest scientific institution west of the Mississippi and the oldest in Southern California.

Star of India is an iron-hulled sailing ship, built in 1863 in Ramsey. After a career sailing from Great Britain to India and New Zealand, she was renamed, re-rigged as a barque, and became a salmon hauler on the Alaska to California route. Retired in 1926, she was restored as a seaworthy museum ship in 1962–3 and home-ported at the Maritime Museum of San Diego in San Diego, California. She is the oldest ship still sailing regularly and also the oldest iron-hulled merchant ship still afloat.

The New Children's Museum is an arts-based children's museum in downtown San Diego. The Museum inspires new ways to see the world through the language of art. Including a cafe, abundant seating, quiet space for parents and infants and an outdoor park. This Museum empowers children to think, play and create through participatory exhibitions, engaging art-making activities, captivating artistic performances, and in-depth educational opportunities.

Fine arts museum housing a broad collection with particular strength in Spanish art. The exhibits ranges in date from 5000 BC to 2012 AD.

The Timken Museum of Art is a fine art museum, established in 1965. It preserves the Putnam Collection of European old masters, American art, and Russian icons for the education and benefit of present and future generations of San Diego residents and visitors