The San Diego Museum of Art opened in Balboa Park on February 28, 1926, under its original name, the Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego. The museum grew out of San Diego's post-exposition civic ambitions and occupied a Spanish Colonial Revival building designed to harmonize with Balboa Park's Panama-California Exposition architecture. Its early identity joined architecture, public philanthropy, and collecting, with later strength in Spanish art and European old masters. The opening gave San Diego a permanent fine-arts institution at a moment when many American cities were converting fairground and civic-beautification legacies into museums, libraries, and cultural parks.
The museum became the region's principal encyclopedic art museum and anchor institution in Balboa Park.