Week 52!!!!! We made it :)
If this week’s calendar feels suspiciously empty, you’re not imagining it. The city has collectively entered holiday mode.
We’re officially in that end-of-year limbo where events are scarce and time feels fake - programming is paused, group chats are quiet, and most people are either out of town or horizontal. Instead of chasing what’s not happening, we’re shifting gears and spotlighting exhibitions you can take in at your own pace: solo, mid-day, or whenever you feel like leaving the couch.
Think of this as a mini directory of shows worth stepping into before the year wraps. And if it’s feeling too quiet, check back in a few days!!!! Once everyone wakes up from the Christmas leftovers coma, things tend to reappear.
Currently on view...
- Bread and Salt: THRESHOLD by Brandon Eugene Secrest examines material, structure, and human agency through painting and site-specific interventions that unfold across Bread & Salt’s galleries.
- MCASD: Multiple exhibitions are currently on view, with two standouts worth noting: Alex Katz: Theater and Dance for bold, pared-down portraits and landscapes, and A Decade of Pop Prints and Multiples for an impressive archive tracing the growth of Pop Art throughout the West.
- Thumbprint Gallery: Running for one more week, Cartoons for Your Brain at 2AM on a Saturday Night plays with nostalgia and late-night surrealism, evoking the feeling of a half-remembered cartoon stumbled upon during a late-night TV run.
- Athenaeum Music & Arts Library: The Faculty & Staff Exhibition showcases current work by the Athenaeum’s own teaching artists and staff. spanning painting, printmaking, ceramics, book arts, and more. This is a great look into the creative practices shaping the institution.
- Mingei International: For mid-century design lovers, Inside the Design Center examines mid-century modern design through the objects, materials, and functional systems that defined the period.
- Covet Art Gallery: Party Time celebrates the gallery’s two-year anniversary with a playful, high-energy group exhibition exploring celebration, excess, and the aesthetics of fun.
- Quint Gallery: This one is so popular it got extended until February! Manny Farber: An Up Beat Title presents paintings and drawings from the later years of Farber’s practice, offering an intimate look at process, domestic space, and a life shaped by art, film, and teaching in San Diego.
- Joseph Bellows Gallery: For the history-minded, LeRoy Robbins: New Deal Photographs offers a quiet look at 1930s California through the lens of New Deal-era documentary photography.
- Oolong Gallery: Color enthusiasts, Zuckerzeit by Bas Louter explores repetition and urban rhythm through spray-painted canvases, with the exhibition functioning as both installation and performance setting.
- Oceanside Museum of Art: Several exhibitions are currently on view, but two worth a shoutout: OMA Biennial 2025 which showcasws over 53 artists and Francisco Eme: No Further Action, which blends ceramics, drawing, photo/audio, and ancestral knowledge rooted in San Diego’s canyon ecosystems.