Via KPBS By John Carroll (General Assignment Reporter & Anchor) and Mike Damron (Video Journalist), 10 February 2026
February is Black History Month, but when it comes to the arts, there is one San Diego institution that elevates the Black experience year-round.
It’s the San Diego African American Museum of Fine Art (SDAAMFA), and its latest exhibition is called “San Diego’s Lost Neighborhoods.”
“We’re responsible to the community as well as the arts. So we do things that are responsible to the community, which is what this is,” said the museum’s executive director Gaidi Finnie. “So that’s why that is important to the San Diego history and the San Diego African American Museum of Fine Art.”
We met Finnie in a gallery at the San Diego History Center, one of many museums SDAAMFA works with to present exhibits. SDAAMFA does not have a physical building of its own.
“We are a museum without walls. Always have been,” Finnie said. “From the time before me, when it was Shirley Day-Williams, who ran it, it was also a museum without walls. It went dormant in 1998 or ’99 for a while, and I reopened it, if you will, in 2014. So it’s been 12 years since, but always as a museum without walls.”
And that answer led to an obvious question: Where does the museum keep its art when it’s not on exhibit?
