Exhibitions are presented in three gallery spaces: the Main Gallery, the Rotunda Gallery, and the North Reading Room. Approximately eight exhibitions per year are presented in each. Exhibitions in the Main Gallery focus on nationally and internationally recognized artists. The Rotunda Gallery emphasizes community partnerships or emerging regional artists. Art in both galleries generally shows some relationship to the Athenaeum’s other focuses, namely books or music. Works have included limited edition artists' books, drawing, painting, site-specific installations, photography, sculpture, collage, mixed media, architecture, and calligraphy.

The North Reading Room, opened during the library’s expansion in 2007, is devoted to showcasing the Athenaeum’s Erika and Fred Torri Arists’ Books Collection. For each exhibition, one artist or press from in the collection is highlighted.

Exhibitions have given deserved recognition to San Diego artists including Joyce Cutler-Shaw, Patricia Patterson, Manny Farber, Italo Scanga, Zandra Rhodes, Russell Forester, Ernest Silva, Faiya Fredman, Jean Lowe, Viviana Lombrozo, Becky Cohen, Nina Katchadourian, Ethel Greene, Robin Bright, Raul Guerrero, Ellen Phillips, James Hubble, Jo Ann Tanzer, Christine Oatman, Roberto Salas, Marie Najera, Kim MacConnel, Teddy Cruz, Adam Belt, Jim Lee, Jay Johnson, and Philipp Scholz Rittermann. Artists from across the U.S. and around the world have included Harry Sternberg, Mauro Staccioli, Marcos Ramirez (ERRE), Nathan Gluck, William Wegman, Faith Ringgold, Ming Mur-Ray, Rolf Händler, David Teeple and Peter Dreher.

The Rotunda Gallery features annual collaborations with the La Jolla Historical Society, the San Diego State University Art Council, and Children’s Hospital. Other community projects have included a fundraising exhibition for the Pacific Rim Parks Project.

The Athenaeum’s Annual Juried Exhibition, and Biennial Artists’ Book Juried Exhibition are among the most prestigious in the San Diego area, and the most sought-after by entering artists.

The Athenaeum Music & Arts Library’s art exhibitions are on view during library hours, Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and Wednesdays until 8:30 p.m. There is no charge for admission. Opening receptions, lectures and artist’s walk-throughs are also free of charge.

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Main Gallery
David Adey: John Henry
February 27 - April 3, 2010
Reception Friday, February 26, 6:30-8:30 PM
Free Admission

Rising San Diego artist David Adey gets down to the basics of things, observing, “All art is made out of things. All things are made out of stuff. All stuff is made from other stuff.” Adey will transform the Main Gallery space, in a tribute to some of the Athenaeum’s favorite “stuff,” books.

Rotunda Gallery
Charlie Miller: Anything but Rehab
February 27 - April 3, 2010
Reception Friday, February 26, 6:30-8:30 PM
Free Admission

Los Angeles-based artist Charlie Miller will exhibit Anything but Rehab, a new series of paintings. Miller is currently working on these in his Sherman Heights studio, a former pharmacy which came replete with two decades of medical ephemera from the 1950s and 60s. He uses acrylics, collaged with vintage prescriptions and modern advertisements.

North Reading Room Gallery
Selections from the Athenaeum's Erika and Fred Torri Artists' Books Collection: Mary Ellen Long
February 27 - April 3, 2010
Reception Friday, February 26, 6:30-8:30 PM
Free Admission

Mary Ellen Long is an artist and bookmaker from Durango, Colorado who has exhibited previously in the Main Gallery, in 1993 and 1997. She has created a prolific body of work including limited-edition books, maps with text, installations, and sculptural interventions inspired by her forest environment in Durango.

Main and Rotunda Galleries
Zandra Rhodes: Verdi's Aida Through the Eyes of Zandra Rhodes
April 10 - May 15, 2010
Reception Friday, April 9, 6:30-8:30 PM
Free Admission

Get a behind-the-scenes look at the sketchbooks, costume drawings and outfits that Zandra Rhodes created for the Verdi's opera Aida. The famed fashion designer was commissioned by Opera Pacific, in 2004, to design the sets and costumes for their production of Aida, directed by John Demaine Maine. Zandra's concept originated from a trip she made to Egypt in 1986. She became fascinated with Egypt's color palette of turquoise, gold, orange and ultramarine; the spectacular jewelry and the pleated figure hugging dresses of the pharaohs.