Events Prior to the onset of the Great Depression, San Diego was often viewed as a provincial coastal town; a cultural wasteland perhaps, and certainly not a major art center. Young professional artists in the decades before the Great Depression centered themselves in New York or Chicago, but not in California. The New Deal injected federal government funds into the arts, and brought sweeping changes to the region that have had a lasting impact in San Diego. Although Belle Baranceanu was…

Events The watershed moment for Balboa Park came in 1915-1916 when San Diego held the Panama-California Exposition. The fair organizers hired New York’s Bertram Goodhue as the exposition’s lead architect. Goodhue’s plans for the buildings in Balboa Park differed dramatically from previous exposition traditions. Rather than using the accepted style of Beaux-Arts, classical Greek or Roman, Goodhue designed his buildings in the exotic Spanish Colonial Revival style. Many longtime San Diegans don’t realize that Goodhue drew inspiration from real 16th…