Guide toSan Francisco's Museums and Galleries This Spring
Explore inspiring exhibitions from esteemed creators of the past and present at these San Francisco institutions.
San Francisco is home to dozens of must-see museums and acclaimed art galleries. Need help deciding which to visit during your stay? No problem! We’ve gathered the goods on the most exciting exhibitions on display across the city this fall. Keep reading to learn more and buy your tickets.
Asian Art Museum
200 Larkin St.
Qi Baishi: Inspiration in Ink
Reaching new heights with its influential style and staggering auction prices, the work of Qi Baishi (Chinese, 1864–1957) inspires audiences worldwide. Blending expertly minimal brushwork with passages of abstraction, Qi changed the course of traditional Chinese painting. His ink paintings capture everyday scenes and familiar moments, evoking the essential beauty of nature and the joy of life’s simple pleasures. On display through April 7, 2025.
Yuan Goang-Ming: Everyday War
The personal becomes universal in recent work by pioneering Taiwanese artist Yuan Goang-Ming (b. Taipei, 1965), whose starkly poetic videos and installations examine contemporary life's fragmented and surreal nature. On display through April 3, through July 7 2025.
California Academy of Sciences
55 Music Concourse Dr.
NightLife
Every Thursday, the California Academy of Science invites visitors (21+) to a vibrant evening of dancing and musical performances, participating in thought-provoking talks and presentations, and a visit with Claude, the resident albino alligator. And to ensure you're having a fabulous night, the café and bars at NightLife serve pizzas, pastas, specialty cocktails, craft beer, and delicious wines.
Dino Days
This spring, come face-to-fang with prehistoric giants as 13 awe-inspiring, life-size animatronic dinosaurs take over both of the Academy’s outdoor gardens in the academy's biggest Dino Days ever.
Venom: Fangs, Stingers, and Spines
Discover how often-feared yet biologically important animals like spiders, scorpions, jellyfish, and snakes sting, suck, bite, and stun while using venom to capture prey and provide deadly defense against predators.
Unseen Oceans
Oceans cover 70% of the Earth’s surface—and yet it’s estimated that only 5% have been explored. Quench your curiosity about the mysterious marine world that surrounds us with Unseen Oceans:
Children's Creativity Museum
221 Fourth St.
Lil' Critter City
This brand new Early Childhood space is designed for the museum's youngest visitors. Crawl, feel, explore, and play in a space designed for tiny hands and expanding minds.
The de Young Museum
50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr.
Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm
Featuring more than 250 personal photographs by Paul McCartney, along with video clips and archival materials, this exhibition offers a behind-the-scenes look at the meteoric rise of the world’s most celebrated band. On display through July 6, 2025.
Isaac Julien: I Dream a World
Over the last 25 years, pioneering artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien (b. 1960, London) has created immersive, multichannel video installations. Celebrated for his poetic visual narratives, Julien explores power, politics, and personal experience through the lens of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Featuring 10 major video installations made between 1999 and 2022, alongside select early single-channel films including his iconic Looking for Langston (1989), this exhibition is the first comprehensive survey of Julien’s work in a museum setting and his first retrospective in the United States. On display from April 12 to July 13, 2025.
The Exploratorium
Pier 15, Embarcadero
Look Up: Eclipse, Moon, and Mars
Get ready to be amazed by the stunning natural phenomena in outer space! Expand your knowledge of the universe—and your place in it—through astonishing visuals and immersive experiences. On display through April 27, 2025.
Adventures in AI
Discover how AI works, think like a computer, and paint with your voice. Interact with AI-powered artworks, look inside a video game chip, and play with image generators. Encounter AI at work in real-world science and research, explore its ethics and impacts, and bring your curiosity to live programs for adults and families. On display from June 12 to September 15, 2025.
Edge of the Square
800 Grant Ave.
All Eyes On Us
All Eyes on Us: Invention & Ingenuity During Artistic Diasporas shines a spotlight on “hidden dragons” - individuals whose artistic careers, practices and expressions shape shifted or became dormant as they navigated the complexities of immigration, assimilation and survival.
Legion of Honor
Wayne Thiebaud: Art Comes from Art
100 34th Ave.
Wayne Thiebaud (1920–2021) became famous for his colorful paintings of American confections and buffets. He was also a self-described art “thief,” who openly drew ideas from and reinterpreted old and new European and American artworks. Highlighting work from across the beloved artist’s six-decade career, this exhibition features Thiebaud’s inventive reinterpretations and direct copies of famous artworks, as well as objects from his personal art collection that inspired him. On display through August 17, 2025.
Museum of Craft and Design
2569 Third St.
Ruglife
Rugs and carpets have shaped spaces since ancient times, with the earliest Persian rugs dating back nearly 2500 years. Learn about their rich history, linked to religion, culture, and nature, and how they inspire contemporary artists. While some explore formal aspects, others critique cultural, racial, and gender stereotypes, transforming decorative objects into compelling art. On display through April 20, 2025.
Beau Mccall: Buttons On!
Buttons On! marks the first-ever retrospective for artist, Beau McCall. Proclaimed by American Craft magazine as “The Button Man,” McCall creates wearable and visual art by hand-sewing clothing buttons onto mostly upcycled fabrics, materials, and objects. Buttons On! showcases pieces from McCall’s nearly forty-year career, the debut of several new works, and select archival material. On display from May 10 through September 14, 2025.
A Roadmap to Stardust
Drawing on antiquarian images of the heavens, origin stories, and myths of early civilizations, A Roadmap to Stardust is a modern inquiry into the cosmos and humankind’s eagerness to explore distant planets. On display from May 10 through September 14, 2025.
Palace of Fine Arts
3601 Lyon St.
EmotionAir
Experience art like never before at EmotionAir—now through September at the Palace of Fine Arts. This immersive exhibition uses inflatable art and interactive installations to turn emotions into larger-than-life masterpieces. From playful projections to thought-provoking performances, get ready for a sensory journey that will move, surprise, and inspire.
Rebecca Camacho Presents
526 Washington St.
Will Gabaldón: Leave all the windows open
Will Gabaldón’s intimately scaled oil paintings foreground the natural world. In varying shades of green offset by vibrantly colored skies, Gabaldón creates bucolic scenes based on personal memories of outdoor spaces fused with imagined scenarios. On display through April 19, 2025.
Angelo Vasta: To Hold Myself
To Hold Myself features oil pastel works on paper by Brooklyn-based artist, Angelo Vasta. His vibrant drawings portray moments of intimacy and domesticity and his compositions are marked by a vivid palette, simplified forms and gestures, and figuration. On display through April 19, 2025.
Celeste: Hacer brotar / To sprout
Celeste’s collaborative practice incorporates large scale, dyed and painted fabric installations that are site-responsive and often activated through experiential viewing. In Hacer brotar / To sprout, the duo draws upon art historical referents to water as a source for life such as Diego Rivera’s iconic work, Cárcamo de Dolores in the Chapultepec Forest in Mexico City, where the artists both live and work. On display from May 1 to June 14, 2025.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)
151 Third St.
Ruth Asawa: Retrospective
This first posthumous retrospective presents the full range of Ruth Asawa’s work and its inspirations over six decades of her career. As an artist, Asawa forged a groundbreaking practice through her ceaseless exploration of materials and forms. On Display from April 5 to September 2, 2025.
New Work: Samson Young
Widely recognized for his singular approach towards sound and new technologies, Samson Young (born 1979, Hong Kong; based in Hong Kong) utilizes performance, video, and installation to rigorously examine the cultural, political, and historical contexts of sound. On display through June 22, 2025
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission St..
The Only Door I Can Open: Women Exposing Prison Through Art
Curated from within prison, The Only Door I Can Open: Women Exposing Prison through Art explores truths about women and incarceration. For this immersive multimedia exhibition, co-curators Tomiekia Johnson and Chantell-Jeannette Black asked eight currently and formerly incarcerated artists to reflect on their relationship to their bed. On display through June 22, 2025.
Lucas Mittenentzwei is a digital project and content consultant. Originally from Germany, he has lived in California since 2010, calling San Francisco his home for several years. Lucas started in the hospitality industry before joining Visit California in its mission to inspire the world to visit the Golden State. He is passionate about all aspects of the travel experience, but trying new restaurants (or tried-and-true classics) is at the top of his list.
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