Interactive cultural exhibits and anthropological displays exploring human history, identity, and society through immersive storytelling and artifacts.

How to Get There

Take I-5 S from downtown San Diego, exit at 6th Avenue, continue into Balboa Park, and follow signs to El Prado where the museum is located near the California Tower.

Overview

The Museum of Us (formerly known as the San Diego Museum of Man) is a museum of anthropology located in Balboa Park, San Diego, California and housed in the historic landmark buildings of the California Quadrangle.

The museum traces its origins to the Panama-California Exposition, which opened in 1915 on the inauguration of the Panama Canal. The central exhibit of the exposition, "The Story of Man through the Ages", was assembled under archaeologist Dr. Edgar Lee Hewett of the School of American Archaeology (later renamed the School of American Research, and since 2007 the School for Advanced Research). Hewett organized expeditions to gather pre-Columbian pottery from the American Southwest and to Guatemala for objects and reproductions of Maya civilization monuments.

The museum is housed in four original buildings from the 1915 Exposition. These include the California Quadrangle, which was designed for the Exposition by American architect Bertram G. Goodhue, and the California Tower, one of the key landmarks in San Diego. The Quadrangle and Tower are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The main museum, including exhibits and gift shop, is housed in the California Building with its landmark tower. The tower, which had been closed to the public for nearly 80 years, reopened in time for the 2015 centennial of the Panama-California Exposition. The tower contains a carillon and quarterly-hour chimes which can be heard all over Balboa Park.

Collections

The museum's cultural resources and permanent exhibits focus on the pre-Columbian history of the western Americas, with materials drawn from Native American cultures of the Southern California region, and Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Maya. The museum holds a collection of Ancient Egyptian antiquities, which includes burial masks, figurines, and seven painted wooden coffins. Total holdings include more than 100,000 documented ethnographic items, more than 300,000 archaeological items, and more than 25,000 photographic images.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Museum of Us", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0