Here are the 17 best museums in San Francisco

Located in the middle of Golden Gate Park, this 130-year-old museum specializes in American art, international textile arts and costumes, African art, Oceanic art, and arts of the Americas. It’s one of the top 10 most visited museums in the U.S. and most visited in San Francisco. It’s completely free in the last 45 minutes of the day for a speed date with art.

Don't miss: The Hamon Observation Tower on the 9th floor. The stunning, glass-encased space overlooks Golden Gate Park, downtown San Francisco, and the ocean. Near the elevator bank to reach the tower, enjoy several Ruth Asawa pieces and their cast shadows on the poured concrete walls.

Global architecture firm Snøhetta designed the 2016 addition to Mario Botta’s iconic 1995 building, tripling its exhibition space and making it the 8th largest art museum in the country. Inside, you’ll find 33,000 works of art, including painting, photography, architecture and design, and media arts. Along with seven ticketed gallery floors, there is 45,000 square feet of public space filled with art, free to the public.

Don't miss: The largest living wall in the country. Its 35 foot expanse is bursting with more than 19,000 plants, installed in a “plant by numbers” format.

This grand Beaux-Arts building is a feat of architecture in itself, an homage to the original in Paris. Devoted to ancient and European art, the museum contains more than 800 European paintings in its permanent collection—dating from the 14th to the mid-20th century —including works by masters like Monet, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, Goya, Fra Angelico and more. The museum will turn 100 in November.

Don't miss: Rodin’s The Thinker and the Louvre-like glass pyramid in the entry court. There are also great views of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Founded in 1966, the Asian Art Museum contains one of the most extensive collections of Asian art in the world, with more than 18,000 works in its permanent collection, from every region of Asia. These objects include ancient jades and ceramics as well as contemporary work and video installations.

Don't miss: The 12th century ewer with lotus-shaped lid made of Korean celadon, a glowing pale green vessel with elaborate lid.

This is an aquarium, planetarium, rainforest and natural history museum wrapped into one. It dates to 1853, although most of its objects housed in its then-Market Street museum were lost in the 1906 earthquake and fire. Thankfully, a Galapagos Island voyage brought back new artifacts. The Academy built its first Golden Gate Park building in 1916—only for several to suffer damage in the 1989 earthquake. Today’s main Renzo Piano building dates to 2005 and has a living roof made of 1.7 million native California plants, organized in seven bumps that represent San Francisco’s hills.

Don't miss: The four-story indoor rainforest, the mounted T-Rex skeleton, and the charming South African penguins.

This eye-popping art and science museum located at Pier 15 mesmerizes kids and adults alike. The hands-on museum touts over 650 exhibits, which are really just fun things to do, most of them built in-house. Rather than docents, high school aged “explainers” roam the floor, and the Exploratorium is also an R&D laboratory that is constantly evolving. It’s the brainchild of Frank Oppenheimer, brother to Robert.

Don't miss: The amazing fog bridge by artist Fujiko Nakaya stretching between piers 15 and 17. Walk along its 150 foot span while 800 nozzles create a “gauzy embrace” of fog. It sustainably runs on desalinated bay water.

This contemporary art museum celebrates Black culture in all its forms, one of only a few U.S. museums dedicated to the “celebration and interpretation of art, artists, and cultures from the African Diaspora.” It opened in 2005, a pet project of former SF mayor Willie Brown. Though the 20,000-square-foot space on three floors at Mission and Third is relatively small, the lens is broad, examining African ancestry from a historic and contemporary angle.

Don't miss: the monumental three-story photomosaic visible through the façade glass, Chester Higgins, Jr.’s Young Girl from Ghana, made from thousands of photographs of people and places.

Located across from Yerba Buena Park, the Jewish Museum is an architectural marvel formed out of a former electrical substation and designed by Daniel Libeskind. It's swathed in more than 3,000 color-changing blue steel panels and shaped to reflect the Hebrew letters chet and yud, which together spell the Hebrew word for life. The three-story, 63,000-square-foot museum showcases a vibrant range of group shows and rotating exhibitions.

Don't miss: Leah Rosenberg’s kaleidoscopic installation When One Sees a Rainbow, on exhibit through April 2025. This is the first artwork designed specifically for the museum’s 65 foot high Yud Gallery and relates to the Jewish practice of saying a blessing when seeing a rainbow.

Founded in 1984 and moved to its fourth and current location a block from Ghirardelli Square in 2017, this petite but well-appointed museum displays a slew of comic art, including comic strips, comic books, anime, political cartoons, graphic novels, zines and underground comix. The museum, endowed by Charles Schulz, houses nearly 7,000 works in its permanent collection, including the work of illustrators like Roz Chast, Robert Crumb, Wally Wood, Edward Gorey and Chuck Jones.

Don't miss: Although the exhibitions rotate so it’s hard to pick a permanent winner, the Reading Room is a great respite for quietly looking through the library collections of comic books.

Local legend Edward Galland Zelinsky founded this museum as a showcase for his unparalleled collection of antique oddities back in 1933, namely coin-operated mechanical musical instruments and antique arcade machines. The assortment spans more than 300 items, including coin-operated pianos, antique slot machines, hand-cranked music boxes, salvaged bits of local history, a steam-powered motorcycle, and various vintage arcade games.

Don't miss: Well, you can’t miss the ginormous and frightening “Laffing Sal” animatronic figure at the entrance, but it might take some scouting to find the Opium Den diorama. Put in a quarter to see the smoker’s hallucination!

This combined natural history museum, science museum and arts center aimed at children originally opened in a city jail (!) in 1937. It’s now run by the Parks & Rec folks in its own building in Corona Heights in a 16-acre park overlooking San Francisco Bay. Besides compelling hands-on exhibits, about 100 animals live here in habitats since they can’t survive in the wild anymore: visitors can interact with some of them. There’s also an observation deck, an amphitheater, a kinetic wind sculpture, native plant gardens, picnic areas and access to hiking trails. Free admission.

Don't miss: One of the oldest continuously operating model railroads in the Western U.S. , a vast and exciting 1960s layout.

Specifically aimed at young ones (aged 2-12), this museum offers two stories of hands-on multimedia arts and technology experiences. There’s an ArtLab, community garden, DesignIt! Studio to make prototypes, an animation studio where kids can make their own stop-motion movies, Making Music Studio where kids build their own instrument, and Storybook Park which is a literacy parklet for kids 5 and under, all housed at Yerba Buena Gardens.

Don't miss: Outside, take a spin on the ornate LeRoy King Carousel, a 1906 merry-go-round which once operated at Playland at the Beach. The ride has twirled in this Yerba Buena location since 1998.

This Presidio museum is devoted to the life and work of Walt Disney, the man behind the iconic mouse. Opened in 2009, it was founded by the Walt Disney Family Foundation and overseen by Disney’s daughter, Diane Disney Miller. The space is split between historic photographs and media from Disney’s life (spread across 10 permanent galleries) and rotating exhibits highlighting the significant animators and stylists behind the company’s beloved movies.

Don't miss: Early metal Mickey Mouse prototypes (you’ll learn he was almost named Mortimer Mouse) and a 12-foot diameter model of Disneyland.

Peruse the work of painters, textile artists, technologists, and sculptors at the Museum of Craft and Design, a small, contemporary non-collecting museum established in 2004 and now celebrating 20 years. It showcases makers, artists and designers through exhibitions and public experiential programs.

Don't miss: The exhibit Neon as Soulcraft, which runs through November, or the MakeArt activations held in the museum’s parklet.

The unusual Gregangelo Museum is set in a private home (of Gregangelo Herrera) and has been featured on Netflix, BBC and HGTV. There are no public tours: you must book an appointment for your experience, which lasts anywhere from 1.5 to 2 hours as you make your way through the home. Aerialists and costumed performers are part of this immersive theater venue. There are six different tours, some of which explore outside spaces in the three enchanted gardens.

Don’t miss: the grandfather clock twisted into a magical spiral. Does time matter?

Although some of us are still smarting over the company’s fraudulent creation of accounts in 2002-16, there’s no denying that the Wells Fargo company played a huge role in San Francisco’s history. Before it was a bank, it was a delivery service, and bringing goods to the Pacific Coast became a lucrative business when the Gold Rush started. At the small two-floor Wells Fargo Museum, see an original 1864 stagecoach with a treasurebox to hold gold under the driver’s seat—the real reason we talk about “riding shotgun.” Opens weekdays only, and closed on bank holidays, ha ha. See miners’ artifacts, handwritten letters, gold specimens and more. Free admission.

Don’t miss: the interactive stagecoach “ride experience.” It sits on rockers to give you the sense of movement.

The Beat Generation was a huge part of San Francisco’s literary history, and the Beat Museum pays homage to it. You can see objects that interpret this poetic form and lifestyle, like a Jack Kerouac postcard, Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s handwritten notes on bad reviews he received (“Thanx for showing me these shit-ass reviews,” for instance) and more. There’s a bookstore and gift shop—and City Lights is right across the street. Also watch the calendar for semi-regular events and discussions.

Don’t miss: Allen Ginsberg’s organ (musical, not the other kind) and the Jack Kerouac bobblehead.