Museums in San Francisco

The de Young Museum is San Francisco's premier fine arts museum, housed in a striking copper-clad building designed by Herzog & de Meuron in Golden Gate Park. Its collections span American art, African art, Oceanic art, and international textiles.

The California Academy of Sciences is the only place on Earth that combines an aquarium, planetarium, rainforest, and natural history museum under one living roof. Renzo Piano's LEED Platinum building features a 2.5-acre living roof undulating with native California plants.

The Exploratorium is a world-renowned interactive science museum on Pier 15, where visitors explore over 650 hands-on exhibits spanning physics, perception, biology, and human behavior. Founded by physicist Frank Oppenheimer, it pioneered the concept of hands-on science learning.

The Asian Art Museum houses one of the most comprehensive collections of Asian art in the world, with over 18,000 objects spanning 6,000 years from across Asia. Located in the former Main Library building in Civic Center.

The Walt Disney Family Museum tells the remarkable story of Walt Disney through interactive galleries featuring early drawings, cartoons, films, music, and a stunning 3.7-meter model of Disneyland as Walt originally envisioned it.

The Cable Car Museum is housed in the actual working cable car barn and powerhouse at the corner of Mason and Washington streets. Visitors can watch the massive sheaves and winding wheels that power all three cable car lines in real time.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is one of the largest modern and contemporary art museums in the United States. Its striking Snøhetta-designed expansion (2016) tripled the exhibition space to over 15,000 square meters.