Current Exhibitions

A Different Life: Finding our Future in San Diego

Come visit this exciting new exhibition, co-curated by a group of teenage refugees from Somalia through the International Rescue Committee's (IRC) Students Plus after-school program. Learn about their struggles, hopes, dreams and how they have adapted to life in San Diego. Don't miss it!

Place of Promise: Stories of San Diego

The Society’s permanent exhibition on San Diego history is already at its halfway mark! Witness history in the making as we develop and build this four-phase project. Now is a great time to come for a visit as phases one and two are currently open!

Phase One: Walk on San Diego

In the first completed gallery of this evolving core exhibition, visitors can literally walk on San Diego. A thirty by thirty foot map of the county extends from wall to wall across the floor. Also featured are two large 1930s murals artist Charles Reiffel, a San Diego streetcar from 1910, and various interactive components. As the rest of the exhibition is developed over the next two years, the stories of San Diego will be interpreted through images, artifacts, and oral histories from the Historical Society's collection.

Phase Two: Building an Early Identity: One Place, Many Cultures

Focusing on San Diego’s first inhabitants, a kaleidoscope of Kumeyaay, Spanish, Mexican and early American settlers up to 1885, this new gallery examines the significant impact these pioneering cultures had in shaping the city’s cultural identity and physical development.

Numerous artifacts from the San Diego Historical Society’s vast collections, many never before seen on public display, are educational tools in the multi-dimensional exhibition. Examples are a 19th century ore cart similar to what was used in mining operations in the mountain community of Julian, and an 1850 hand-appliquéd, red and white cotton quilt that was honored by the California Heritage Quilt Project.

This gallery is the second phase of our developing core exhibition, Place of Promise, Stories of San Diego. Additional galleries will be unveiled over the next two years, with Phase 3 opening on December 13, 2008.

Dressing a City: Selected Styles from Marston's Department Store, 1878-1961

The San Diego Historical Society invites you to immerse yourself in San Diego's original shopping experience. Fashions and accessories for men, women and children are featured in this trip down memory lane. Exhibit closes January 2009.

100 Years of Art in San Diego: A Retrospective

100 Years of Art showcases a century of artwork by San Diego artists. You'll find plenty of inspiration in this impressive sampling of works! Exhibit closes March 2009.

Changing Times for San Diego Women

Located just outside our Research Library door in Balboa Park, "Changing Times for San Diego Women" features images of women from the Union-Tribune Photograph Collection from 1950-1955.

Commemorating 75 Years: The Serra Museum

This exhibit chronicles the history of Presidio Hill from the turn of the century through the Serra Museum’s dedication day on July 16, 1929. See how Mission Valley looked in the 1880s! See how the San Diego River once flowed at the base of Presidio Hill! Look through a scrapbook of early images of the Serra Museum and surrounding areas. The exhibit occupies two rooms at the top of the tower and includes wonderful artifacts, photographs, and ephemera dating to 1929 and earlier.

Life on Presidio Hill

Native peoples used this hill above Old Town long before the Spanish, the Mexicans and then the Americans came. A thousand years ago, the Tipai-Kumeyaay people lived in small groups on the flat area at the base of Presidio Hill.

While the Kumeyaay had contact with European explorers when Cabrillo sailed into San Diego Bay in 1542 and when Vizcaino entered the bay in 1602, the "Sacred Expedition of 1769" would change their lives forever. Father Junipero Serra planted a cross on Presidio Hill and founded San Diego's first mission there. Spanish soldiers established the presidio, or fort, and built several residences. This was the site of the first European settlement in Alta California.