Travelers passing through Terminal 2 at San Diego International Airport will now walk past something unexpected on their way to the gate: a free art exhibition built around artificial intelligence. Called “NEW PAINT,” the show features seven artists from the San Diego region who use AI as a creative collaborator, and is suitable for all ages.
According to KPBS, the show explores the evolving relationship between art and artificial intelligence, with each participating artist treating AI not as a tool but as a partner in the creative process. It's free and open throughout Terminal 2.
A City With Deep Roots in AI Art
San Diego's connection to artificial intelligence and art didn't start with this exhibition. The city has a pioneering role in the field going back to the late 1960s, when artist Harold Cohen conceived AARON at the University of California, San Diego. The Whitney Museum describes AARON as the earliest artificial intelligence program made for artmaking, created after Cohen left behind an established painting career in London, per whitney.org.
Cohen didn't see his work with AARON as simply programming a machine to paint. The museum notes that he understood the relationship as a genuine collaboration, spending much of his life exploring how an artist's knowledge and process could be translated into code. A retrospective at the Whitney went on to feature screen-based versions of AARON alongside drawings made live in the gallery by plotters running the original software.
Part of a Longer Tradition at the Airport
NEW PAINT also arrives as the latest chapter in an airport arts program with its own two-decade history. San Diego International Airport's arts initiative began in 2003, when the county airport authority became an independent agency, and was formalized two years later under the authority's first Arts Master Plan, according to Axios. By 2014, the program had grown enough to launch its first themed art show spanning the entire airport.
That public art effort is meant to do more than fill blank walls. The airport's Public Art Program is charged with building a broad collection of permanent artwork that supports and enhances the mission of the Airport Authority, per san.org. It's part of a wider pattern nationally, with the same report noting that airports across the country have increasingly leaned into the role of public art museum.
Following a String of Temporary Exhibitions
NEW PAINT follows a recent run of temporary shows that have transformed Terminal 2 into rotating gallery space. In 2025, the airport hosted “Mirror Mirror,” which filled both pre- and post-security areas with more than 100 works by 16 contemporary artists from the region, according to san.org. Before that, 2023's “A Necessary Departure” brought together work from 17 local artists and organizations in the same pre- and post-security spaces throughout Terminal 2, examining personal transformation, as reported by stuckattheairport.com.
San Diego's airport is far from alone in treating its terminals like gallery floors. A 2023 report found that about 15 other airports nationwide run arts programs of a similar caliber to San Diego's, per a kpbs.org report from that year. NEW PAINT adds to San Diego's growing circuit of accessible, free art, with Terminal 2 positioned as one of its more unusual stops.
