Check out San Francisco’s 17 best museums

Best for: contemporary art

Located in the middle of Golden Gate Park, the 130-year-old de Young—which since 2005 now resides in a much more contemporary building—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. Great news! Because it’s been so popular, the exhibition “Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm” has been extended through October 5. It contains images that haven’t been seen for 60 years.

Don’t miss: The Hamon Observation Tower on the ninth 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.

Time Out Tip: The museum is launching a new Late Night Editions event, an after-hours series with food trucks, cash bar cocktails, a vintage photo booth, DJ sets and access to some exhibitions and galleries. The first one is June 12 from 6 to 9:30pm with access to the Paul McCartney and Isaac Julien exhibits and other parts of the museum; tickets are $30 and $15 for members.

Price: $20 adults, $11 students, $17 seniors 65+, free for 17 and under

Best for: Disney nostalgia

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. The current exhibition “Walt Disney Treasures Objects” will display a new object every two months in the awards lobby (a free space you can visit without paying admission), running through September 2025. 

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.

Time Out tip: Check out the new exhibition “Mary Blair: Mid-Century Magic.” Blair was one of Walt Disney’s favorite artists, and you can see her mark on Disneyland installations such as It’s a Small World and within the animation studio’s films. This exhibition features nearly 150 artworks—watercolors, drawings, collages and ceramics—and historical photographs. It runs through September 7.

Price: $25 adults, $20 students and seniors 65+, $15 youth 6-17

Best for: contemporary art

Global architecture firm Snøhetta designed the 2016 addition to Mario Botta’s iconic 1995 building, tripling its exhibition space and making it the eighth-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’s 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.

Time Out tip: “Ruth Asawa: Retrospective” runs through September 2. Asawa is one of San Francisco’s favorite artists with woven wire sculptures and other sculptural forms that cast interesting shadows.

Price: $30 adults, $25 seniors 65+, $23 student, free for 18 and under.

Best for: literary history

The Beat Generation was a huge part of San Francisco’s literary history, and this museum pays homage to it. You can see objects that interpret this poetic form and lifestyle, like a Jack Kerouac postcard and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s handwritten notes on bad reviews he received (“Thanx for showing me these shit-ass reviews,” for instance). Featured exhibits include the 1949 Hudson Commodore from the 2012 film adaptation of Kerouac’s novel On the Road; personal effects belonging to him, Ferlinghetti, ruth weiss, Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg; materials from the 1956 obscenity trial over Ginsberg’s Howl; and the Women of the Beat Generation. There’s a bookstore and gift shop as well as semi-regular events and discussions.

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

Time Out tip: Make sure to also visit City Lights bookstore across the street.

Price: $8 adults, $5 students, teachers, senior and military.

Best for: feeling European

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.

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.

Time Out tip: The exhibition “Wayne Thiebaud: Art Comes from Art” runs through August 17. With its thesis that every Thiebaud painting is based on someone else’s work, it provides the chance to see a profusion of these glorious and life-affirming paintings. Fun fact: The painting that opens this show, Betty Jean Thiebaud and Book, was originally painted without the book, which Thiebaud decided to add later.

Price: $20 adults, $11 students, $17 seniors 65+, free for 17 and under.

Best for: Incredible Asian art collections

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.

Time Out tip: “Yuan Goang-Ming: Everyday War” runs through July 7, featuring video work from this Taiwanese artist examining the “surreal nature of contemporary life.”

Price: $20 adult, $17 seniors 65+, $14 college students and youth 13-17, free for 12 and under.

Best for: hands-on science

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 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.

Time Out tip: We have it on good authority that the Nightlife events (creatures, cocktails, DJs for a 21+ crowd) are super fun.

Price: $49 adults, $45 youth 13-18, $39 kids 3-12.

Best for: hands-on science

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 and operates several times a day.

Time Out tip: After Dark Thursday Nights provide a chance to do all the fun exhibits with cocktails and without kids; you have to be 18+ to attend. After Dark turns 15 this year!

Price: $40 adults, $30 disabled people, students 18+, teachers, youth 4-17 and seniors 65+.

Best for: celebrating Black art

Note: The museum is temporarily closed through September while interior spaces are upgraded.

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.

Time Out tip: The museum will reopen October 1, with the exhibition “UNBOUND: Art, Blackness, and the Universe,” featuring works by international African Diasporic artists contemplating metaphysics, cosmology and spectulative thought. 

Price: When reopened: $15 adults, $7 seniors, students and educators, free for youth 5-12.

Best for: honoring Jewish culture

Note: The museum is temporarily closed, as least until December 2025, as it reconfigures a challenging financial landscape post-pandemic.

Located across from Yerba Buena Park, the Contemporary 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. It’s the only museum of its kind in the U.S. that looks at contemporary Jewish culture, and it serves as an integral part of the Bay Area’s Jewish community.