18 Museums to Explore in San Francisco County

Checkout places to visit in San Francisco County

San Francisco County

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Museums to Explore in San Francisco County

Asian Art Museum

The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco houses one of the most comprehensive Asian art collections in the world, with more than 18,000 works of art in its permanent collection, some as much as 6,000 years old.

Bay Area Discovery Museum

The Bay Area Discovery Museum is a children's museum located in Sausalito. The museum is geared to children from 6 months to 10 years of age with different areas of the museum tailored to a specific age group. Children have the options of exploring the 6 different sections of the museum: Art Studios, Bay Hall, Discovery Hall, Lookout Cove, Tot Spot, and Fab Lab.

California Academy of Sciences

Among the largest museums of natural history in the world, housing over 46 million specimens.

Cartoon Art Museum

The Cartoon Art Museum is a California art museum that specializes in the art of comics and cartoons. It is the only museum in the Western United States dedicated to the preservation and exhibition of all forms of cartoon art. The permanent collection features some 7,000 pieces as of 2015, including original animation cels, comic book pages and sculptures.

Children's Creativity Museum

The Children's Creativity Museum offers hands-on, multimedia arts and technology experiences designed to build creative confidence in children ages 2-12. It offers workshops and exhibits that allow children to produce their own media through various interactive, creative processes: stop motion animation, programming robots, music video production, design challenges, art projects, and more.

de Young Museum

This is a fine arts museum located in San Francisco, California. Located in Golden Gate Park. It showcases American art from the 17th through the 21st centuries, international contemporary art, textiles, and costumes, and art from the Americas, the Pacific and Africa.

Exploratorium

The Exploratorium is a museum of science, technology, and arts in San Francisco. A huge number of diverse exhibits, and many with hand-on learning experiences. This is the only place in San Francisco where visitors can touch, tinker and play with more than 650 hands-on exhibits.

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, comprising the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, is the largest public arts institution in the city of San Francisco. The museums operate on an annual budget funded by membership dues, ticket sales, donations and purchases in its stores.

Legion of Honor

This is an art museum in San Francisco, California. Located in Lincoln Park, the Legion of Honor is a component of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. It displays a collection spanning more than 6,000 years of ancient and European art and houses the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts.

Madame Tussauds San Francisco

Madame Tussauds San Francisco is a wax museum located in Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco in California. The attraction opened on June 26, 2014 and became the 17th Madame Tussauds museum to open worldwide. The attraction features wax figures of famous figures from movies, music, politics, popular culture and sport. It also celebrates “The Spirit of San Francisco” with wax figures of local artists, musicians and activists from the city's past.

Musée Mécanique

The Musée Mécanique is a for-profit interactive museum of 20th-century penny arcade games and artifacts, located at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, California. With over 300 mechanical machines, it is one of the world's largest privately owned collections.

Museum of Craft and Design

The Museum of Craft and Design develops and presents engaging exhibitions and educational programs that explore and define the role of craft and design in our dynamically changing global culture, encouraging our audience to see the world differently.They introduce visitors to a broad range of artists and designers, and to the many approaches to creative expression in these fields. Education programs address a wide variety of topics.

Museum of the African Diaspora

The Museum of the African Diaspora occupies 20,000 Sq. Ft. on portions of three floors of the St. Regis Hotel and Residences designed by SOM. It holds exhibitions and presents artists exclusively of the African diaspora, one of only a few museums of its kind in the United States. It does not have a permanent collection and instead works directly with artists or independent curators when developing exhibitions.

Randall Museum

The Randall Museum is more than just a natural history or science museum. Focusing on the cultures and environments of the San Francisco Bay Area. The museum focuses on science, nature and the arts. On exhibit are live native and domestic animals and interactive displays about nature. Other facilities include a theater, a wood shop, and art and ceramics studios.

San Francisco Cable Car Museum

The San Francisco Cable Car Museum in the Nob Hill area offers exhibits that trace the history and workings of the iconic San Francisco cable cars. The museum is part of the complex that also houses the cable car power house, which drives the cables, and the car depot.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

A modern art museum located in the heart of San Francisco. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art. The museum's current collection includes over 33,000 works of painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, design, and media arts and more.

The Contemporary Jewish Museum

The Contemporary Jewish Museum is a non-collecting museum at 736 Mission Street at Yerba Buena Lane in the South of Market. The museum's mission is to make the diversity of the Jewish experience relevant for a twenty-first century audience through exhibitions and educational programs. The museum has no permanent collection. It curates and hosts a broad array of exhibitions each year in collaboration with other institutions.

The Walt Disney Family Museum

The Walt Disney Family Museum is one of the Bay Area’s most inspirational venues, welcoming visitors to an historic building that reveals 40,000 square feet of imagination, which features the life and legacy of Walt Disney. It features the newest technology and historic materials and artifacts to bring Disney’s achievements to life, with interactive galleries that include early drawings and animation, movies, music, listening stations, and a 12-foot diameter model of Disneyland.

Map of Museums to explore in San Francisco County