9 Museums to Explore in Alameda County

A majestic combined art museum, repertory movie theater, and archive associated with the University of California, Berkeley. The museum has featured works by Albert Bierstadt, Jonathan Borofsky, Joan Brown, Robert Colescott and so more. The museum also features the MATRIX Program for Contemporary Art.

A majestic museum, which is home to the largest permanent collection of any liberal arts college in the West. Through innovative exhibitions, programs, and collections, the museum engages and inspires the intellectual and creative life of the Mills community as well as the diverse audiences of the Bay Area and beyond.

A beautiful film museum housed in the Edison Theater, a century-old Nickelodeon movie theater, just half a block from the former site of the Niles Essanay Studios where Broncho Billy and Charlie Chaplin made films in the 1910s. It is dedicated to preserving and showing silent films and their history.The museum houses a large collection of Motion Picture equipment and related artifacts, as well as about 10,000 Silent Films in their archive.

Oakland Aviation Museum, formerly called Western Aerospace Museum, was founded in 1981 as a non-profit organization operating an aviation museum located at North Field of Oakland International Airport in Oakland, California. It has over 30 vintage and modern airplanes, both civilian and military, and other displays that highlight noted aviators and innovators.

The Pacific Pinball Museum is an interactive space offering a chronological and historical display of rare bagatelles and early pinball games in addition to over 90 playable pinball machines ranging in era from the 1940s to present day located on Webster Street in Alameda, CA. There are hand-painted murals, vintage Jukeboxes, educational handouts and rotating focused exhibits. There are also provisions for field-trips, self guided tours.

Pleasanton's Museum on Main is dedicated to linking the past to the future by preserving, clarifying and disseminating information about history specific to the Tri Valley region. Its collection at California Revealed consists of texts, moving images, and audio recordings from the 1890s to 2000s. The collection includes oral history interviews with residents of Pleasanton, films about Livermore, and an extensive run of issues of the Pleasanton Times.

Crown Memorial State Beach is a state park in the city of Alameda. It is operated by East Bay Regional Parks District. The park's Crab Cove Visitor Center, at the north end of the beach, features exhibits about the marine life environment of San Francisco Bay, the history of Alameda, and the importance of the Bay. There is an 800-gallon aquarium system with interactive stations for viewing sea creatures up close.

The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life is a museum of Jewish history, art, and culture at the University of California, Berkeley. It houses more than 30,000 Jewish artifacts and manuscripts, which is the third largest collection of its kind in the United States.

This is a museum ship, located on the southernmost pier of the former Naval Air Station Alameda in Alameda, California. The museum is composed of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet . exhibits from the NASA Apollo Moon exploration missions, and several retired aircraft from the Second World War and the transonic and early supersonic jet propulsion period and more are there.