The San Diego Veterans Museum

Art Gallery & Museums

About

The San Diego Veterans Museum in downtown San Diego's Balboa Park operates from the former Naval Hospital chapel at 2115 Park Boulevard, a veteran-owned institution built on a site that served as Camp Kidd when the Navy took possession of Balboa Park in 1942. Patriots Hall, the central exhibition space, presents 20 display cases and two 8-by-12-foot oil murals by painter Richard DeRosset spanning World War I through the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, complementing the naval aviation artifacts at the San Diego Air & Space Museum nearby in the park. Five themed galleries—31 Veterans Who Became Presidents, Women in Uniform, The Vietnam War in Totality, American Ex-Prisoners of War, and How Our Military Shaped San Diego—surround the hall, while WWII-era stained glass windows by Fred Wyland illuminate the chapel's original architectural detail. The museum's Military History Research Library holds more than 7,000 volumes and maintains an active oral-history project in partnership with the Library of Congress, a veterans archival mission shared with the Navy SEAL Museum San Diego downtown. The most resource-intensive programming is the annual San Diego Veterans Day Parade coordination, which assembles active-duty units, veteran service organizations including the Tuskegee Airmen and Buffalo Soldiers chapters, and community groups for a march through the downtown corridor.

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