Art and Culture Exhibitions
The visual arts program demonstrates the library’s role as a cultural institution embracing a broad range of disciplines while assisting San Diego's emerging, mid-career and professional artists achieve visible opportunities and receive wider local, regional, and national attention.
For more information about library exhibitions, email us at OnView@sandiego.gov.
Featured Exhibitions
San Diego Art Prize | October 28, 2023 - January 14, 2024 | Learn More
Upcoming


As part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: Art and Science Collide, San Diego Public Library’s Visual Arts Program presents Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work, a retrospective exhibition about the work of husband-and-wife team of Helen Mayer and Newton Harrison, who were among the earliest and most notable ecological artists. Founding members of the Visual Arts Department at UC San Diego, Helen and Newton were local San Diego artists for nearly four decades, where they developed their pioneering concepts of Ecological Art.
Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work is the first exhibition to focus on their California work, between the late 1960s and 2000s. California Work revisits the Harrisons’ groundbreaking ecological concepts through re-staged performance artworks, drawings, paintings, photography, collages, maps, archival documentation of large-scale installations, and unrealized proposals for real-world ecological solutions.
OnView - Local Arts
The Color and Magic of Creating
Christy Ross
September 30- November 30, 2023
San Diego Chinese Historical Society
October 31 - December 28, 2023

Throughout 2023
Previously OnView Exhibitons
Explore past exhibitions at Central Library Art Gallery, including behind the scenes content and virtual tours.