Our annual San Diego Museum Month program may look a little different this year, but February remains the perfect month to discover (or re-discover) the story of San Diego as told through our diverse range of museums, historic sites, gardens, zoo/aquariums and more.

Join us every day in February as we explore a rich world of cultural experiences, including virtual activities, behind-the-scenes tours, and other special museum moments you can only find in San Diego.

Follow San Diego Museum Council on social media for daily updates and happenings, and check back here soon for details. #SDMuseumMonth

Take your Valentine to San Diego's Balboa Park or Old Town and turn them into a giant game board with this fun scavenger hunt adventure.  Combine the excitement of the Amazing Race with a three-hour city adventure.  Guided from any smart phone, teams make their way among well known and overlooked gems of the city, solving clues and completing challenges while learning local history.  Available sunrise to sunset.  Start when you want and play at your pace.  Save 20%- Only $39.20 for a team of 2-5 people after Promotion Code: SDEVENT.  Sign up online at www.UrbanAdventureQuest.com. Covid Friendly outdoor activity. No tour guides to meet, no people added to your group.

The ancient Maya are perhaps best known for their jungle-covered cities with large plazas and grand temples standing taller than the forests encasing them. These built places are often depicted as the settings of elaborate state rituals where elites would perform their ceremonial duties in front of the masses. Yet important rituals were not performed only in cities. Archaeological research over the last few decades has come to reveal that caves and cave-like spaces were among the most potent and important places for ritual performances by the ancient Maya. They were the places where the ancestors originally emerged from and where they returned to after their passing. They were also portals to where powerful Earth forces, particularly the rain deity, could be ritually accessed and negotiated with.

Inspired by the golden age of the traveling carnival (1870-1930), with its social outcasts of carny folk, sideshow freaks-and-geeks, I have endeavored to re-represent that unwanted slice of society through the innocence of children.

These children represent vulnerability, the inherent need to be wanted and loved without a thought as to “why?”

I would like my images to nurture compassion for the differences within us all. Our need for acceptability and fitting in. But most of all the need to be valued and loved. My images of children are faultless individuals; possessing obvious imperfections and undesirable qualities, social outcasts, different, through no fault of their own, but nonetheless unwanted and made to feel unnecessary.