Max Donner, San Diego Fine Arts Examiner, talks up this weekend’s December NIghts in Balboa Park, San Diego.

The best things in life are free. At least on this Friday, December 4 and Saturday, December 5. The occasion is the annual Balboa Park December Nights celebration. The special event includes free admission to Balboa Park museums both evenings from five to nine p.m.

It is also a good time for art admirers to visit their favorite museums in Balboa Park. This weekend is also your last chance to see the special exhibition of works by Picasso, Miró, and Calder at the San Diego Museum of Art, which ends December 6. The Museum of Man is hosting two art exhibitions, “Gods & Gold: Ancient Treasures From Mexico to Peru,” and “The Art of Andean Retablos: Religion, Tradition and Social Commentary.” The retablos are portable altars dating to the Spanish colonial period in Latin America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, art treasures of great historical significance that are rarely on view. In addition, The Ordover Gallery at the San Diego Museum of Natural History is concluding its display of National Geographic photography of the Baja California coast.

Read Max’s complete write-up here: Balboa Park December Nights Highlight Arts

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Balboa Park December Nights Highlight Arts

Balboa Park Halloween Family Day

Here’s a list of the museums in Balboa Park offering special admission as part of Halloween Family Day this weekend in San Diego.

Get the complete scoop on theBalboa Park website.

Mingei International Museum– Papel picado (Mexican cut paper) crafts 12-4pm

Museum of Photographic Arts– Film in collaboration with San Diego Children’s Film Festival “Coraline” (2009) (recommended for ages 8 and up), 2pm

Museum of San Diego History–Create unique hats using historic photographs of vintage hats as inspiration in collaboration with the exhibition San Diego Style. (11am-3pm)

Reuben H. Fleet Science Center– Science-themed pumpkin contest, 20% off admission, galleries or IMAX for adults 18+ … 17 and under receive free gallery admission and IMAX for only $8.50

San Diego Air and Space Museum–build paper pumpkins with parachutes at 12:30 and 2:30pm. At 2pm the Great (real) Pumpkin will plunge off the roof attached to a da Vinci-style parachute. Also see the special exhibition To the Moon: Snoopy Soars with NASA.

San Diego Automotive Museum–Scavenger hunt with a prize

San Diego Model Railroad Museum–Thomas the Tank Engine Astro Jump & Engineer Trick or Treat bags (11am-3pm)

San Diego Museum of Art–“New Village Art Theatre” performs scenes from upcoming production (1-1:30pm); Search & Find Tour and art making activities (1-3pm).

San Diego Museum of Man– Day of the Dead activities include: make your own Day of the Dead altar, a special docent-led Spooky Tour in the Ancient Egypt Gallery, and light refreshments

San Diego Natural History Museum–Howl-O-Ween Family Day. Inspect arthropods, raptors, and reptiles—spooky specimens alive and dead! Make a bat craft, and march in a costume parade after each Ms. Frizzle™ Bats are Beautiful performances at 12 and 2pm (parades are at 12:30 & 2:50pm). Children 12 and younger can enter a costume contest to win a free Family Membership to the museum.

San Diego Youth Symphony – Watch open rehearsals as San Diego’s finest young musicians prepare for the Celebration of Music Concert. In Casa del Prado from 8:30am-6:45pm

San Diego Zoo–Come visit the special booth on El Prado near the Balboa Park Visitors Center with creepy, crawly bugs, 11:30-12:30pm and more animals scheduled throughout the day. Also at the Zoo, children under 12 free with paid adult admission.

SDAI: Museum of the Living Artist–“Art Box 2” for children to discover elements found in art.

Spanish Village Art Center–Artists turn pumpkins into magical Jack O’Lanterns on the patio. Free drawings for the Jack O’Lanterns throughout the day. Tin can painting and wooden ornament craft-making. “Fish” for free treasures at the “Fishin’ Place”.

We appreciated this sharp-tongued listing SDMA’s Culture and Cocktails event tomorrow night in Balboa Park:

Culture cold war: San Diego Museum of Art’s Culture and Cocktails events are often filled with some serious gallerinas and culture vultures eyeballing each other more than the art. We don’t expect that to change between 6 and 9 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 29, but scenesters take note: SDMA’s new exhibition, American Artists of the Russian Empire, featuring mid-century work from Russian artists who emigrated to the U.S. from the Soviet Union pre- and post-WWII, is a stirring show that’s worth taking an hour or so to peruse. There will also be complimentary cocktails (we have a feeling vodka will be involved), DJs, an interactive watercolor activity and an after-party at The Prado restaurant for post-culture schmoozing. 1450 El Prado in Balboa Park. $15. www.sdmart.org.

This is a great article on one of San Diego’s relatively unknown art museum treasures in Balboa Park.

John Wilson has been director of the Timken Museum of Art for less than a year, but already he is making a large claim for the institution he leads.

“It’s among the most intimate art viewing experiences in the world,” he says.

The point isn’t exaggerated. Within its modest confines – the museum contains about 4,300 square feet of gallery space – you will find steller paintings by European and American greats: Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Anthony Van Dyke, John Singleton Copley and many others.

But Wilson makes another very different observation about the Timken: “We’re invisible in many ways. People are delighted with the collection and always comment that the guards are wonderful. But they say ‘We didn’t know you were here.’”

Read the entire article in the UT online.

Director John Wilson of the Timken Museum on Balboa Park, San Diego

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Galleries open tonight in North Little Italy for “NoLi Notte” the successor to Kettner Nights, include:

• Colisseum Fine Arts
• Mixture
• Noel-Baza Fine Arts
• Scott White Contemporary Art
• Jett Gallery
• Coalesce
• Seminal Projects

Several of these galleries are featuring pieces from the “Little and Large” exhibition, a county wide show organized by the San Diego Visual Arts Network in honor of the Alexander Calder jewelry retrospective at San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park.

In-the-studio video of Heather Reilly Hiemstra, a metalsmith and custom jeweler in San Diego, discussing her LifeChain jewelry project developed for the current “Little and Large” Exhibition. Organized at multiple art galleries throughout San Diego by the San Diego Visual Arts Network, the exhibition honors the Alexander Calder jewelry retrospective coming to the San Diego Museum of Art” this summer in Balboa Park.

Heather debuts the LifeChain this Friday night in Little Italy at NoLi Notte, the successor to Kettner NIghts in the new “NoLi” (North Little Italy) art & design district, with her husband John Hiemstra (paintings) and host furniture designer Joseph Bedford at Coalesce Gallery, 2360 India Street, Little Italy, San Diego.