10 Best Museums in San Diego

The USS Midway Museum is a museum on a historic naval aircraft carrier, Midway, that houses a collection of aircraft. The museum is located in downtown San Diego at Navy Pier and features many aircraft built in Southern California. The USS Midway was the longest-serving aircraft carrier during the mid-to-late 20th century and carried 200,000 sailors. Now a museum, the Midway’s compartments are exhibited, including the engine room, pilots’ ready rooms, and primary flight control. The museum also serves as an event space for military and civilian events.

The San Diego Natural History Museum has exhibits covering everything from fossils to biodiversity in Southern California. The museum is located in Balboa Park and operates as one of the oldest scientific institutions in the Western United States. One of the main highlights of the San Diego Natural History Museum is Fossil Mysteries, an interactive exhibit that focuses on the prehistory of Southern California with fossils, murals, models, and dioramas. Other exhibits include the biodiversity of Southern California and collections on botany, birds and mammals, herpetology, and paleontology.

The San Diego Museum of Us is an anthropology museum that focuses on pre-Columbian history of the Americas. Located in Balboa Park, the museum is held within historic landmark buildings of the California Quadrangle. Some of the most impressive collections in the museum include Maya: Heart of Sky, Heart of Earth, which features Maya monument casts and artifacts, and BEERology, a special exhibit on brewing and beer history. You could also see exhibits on intimacy, race, Ancient Egypt, and human relationships with animals.

The Fleet Science Center is a science museum and planetarium that uses interactive exhibits to teach about scientific principles. Located in Balboa Park, the museum is named after the aviation pioneer Reuben H. Fleet, founder of the U.S. Air Mail Service. The science center has numerous exhibits and galleries to illustrate science, including the planetarium with a state-of-the-art star projector and an IMAX dome theater. Permanent exhibits include Origins in Space, Power Play San Diego, and Game Masters: The Exhibition. One of the newer exhibits features the largest display of LEGO® art in the world.

The Museum of Photographic Arts contains collections that highlight the accomplishments of some great artists in photography and film. The historic museum is located in Balboa Park and is one of the few museums dedicated to photography. The museum has an extensive collection of images and films from greats in the industry, including Margaret Bourke-White and Ruth Bernhard. One of the notable features of the museum’s collection is the concentration on 20th-century Soviet Russian photography, photojournalism, and documentary photography. You could also see 19th-century works from World War II and the Depression era.

The Mingei International Museum is a museum for crafts, design, and folk art and their influence on culture. Located in the House of Charm in Balboa Park, the Mingei International Museum was named for the Japanese word meaning “art of the people.” The collection contains over 17,000 objects from 141 countries around the world, some dating back to the 3rd century BCE. Some examples include pottery and wood carvings from Mexico, costumes and jewelry from China, masks from Africa, and furniture and glass from the United States.

The San Diego Model Railroad Museum is a museum dedicated to scale model trains and railroads to preserve the heritage of railroading. The museum is one of the largest of its kind and is found in the lower level of the Casa de Balboa Building in Balboa Park. The museum has some unique features that set it apart from other museums of its kind, including some of the largest HO and N scale layouts and a Lionel type 3-Rail O gauge toy train gallery. Other highlights include a two-level layout of the Southern Pacific/Santa Fe railroad of the 1950s and a specialized library for model railroading and real railroads.

The Birch Aquarium at Scripps has massive tanks that focus on Pacific Ocean marine life, tide pools, and oceanography. Located in the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, the aquarium was designed as a public outreach program for the institution and a marine research facility. Boasting over 64,000 square feet of space, the aquarium has 60 tanks of Pacific Ocean fish and invertebrates from California, the Indo-Pacific, and Mexico. There’s also a tide pool with up-close views of hermit crabs and starfish, a sandy-bottomed tank with sharks and rays, and an exhibit dedicated to seahorse biology with a seahorse nursery.

The Museum of Making Music displays the impact of music on society and houses hands-on exhibits. Located in Carlsbad, the museum has 3 sections of exhibits on making instruments, distributing instruments, and making music. Some of the highlights of the museum include audio samples of popular songs, vintage instruments and memorabilia, and an interactive space with hands-on instrument use. For kids, the museum has the Sit ‘N Play area for interactive play. Throughout the year, the Museum of Making Music hosts temporary exhibitions with themes.

The New Children's Museum stimulates imagination and creativity through interactive experiences for children. Located in downtown San Diego, the museum teams with local artists to create contemporary playscapes for children to explore and learn. Some of the museum’s unique exhibits include whammock!, an interactive textile environment made of nylon, and the wonder sound, a labyrinth of rooms with nooks and crannies to explore. The nature matching system, which encourages matching colors with shades of fruits and vegetables, and finding symmetry in nature, a gallery of watercolors of the natural world, also offer learning and creativity.