Dozens of fascinating exhibits in San Francisco are refreshed and replaced every single month. We’re keeping tabs on the best new temporary displays including San Francisco Museum of Modern Art exhibitions, fine art at the de Young and the Legion of Honor, and contemporary art exhibits at the Asian Art Museum.
Read on to start planning your next museum visit, and be sure to see our list of free museum days in SF to get the most bang for your buck.
1. Bouquets to Art 2024
The de Young Museum is back with the 40th annual rendition of Bouquets to Art, its popular week-long floral art exhibition. Leading floral designers will present captivating arrangements inspired by their favorite art pieces in the galleries. Don’t forget to visit Wilsey Court to see the magnificent hanging floral installation.
🎟️ Tickets: Bouquets to Art requires special exhibition tickets
🗓️ Dates: June 4-9, 2024
📍 Location: de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
2. Rituals of Care
Lee Mingwei’s Rituals of Care explores healing from trauma and social connection through creative means. There are three rooms to explore with a different healing installation at the center of each: in one, guests can write a heartfelt letter that they can choose to mail to the recipient or leave behind to join the exhibition. The second room showcases a collection of paintings by Bay Area artists offering their respective interpretations of a famous Edward Hicks piece, and the third is a space covered with dozens of colorful spools of thread where you can actually get clothes hand-mended. Guests are meant to heal through creativity and art, and there is a hopeful and heartfelt tone throughout the works.
🗓️ Dates: Open now through July 7, 2024
📍 Location: de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
4. Fashioning San Francisco: A Century of Style
The de Young’s new fashion exhibition takes visitors through the history of women’s fashion in San Francisco, showcasing pieces by over 50 fashion designers drawn from the Fine Art Museums’ permanent collections. Most of the pieces were donated to FAMSF by prominent Bay Area women over the years, and the exhibition takes you through their stories. FAMSF has also partnered with Snap Inc. to install AR mirrors in the museum, where visitors can “try on” the extravagant evening ensembles.
🎟️ Tickets: Fashioning San Francisco requires special exhibition tickets
🗓️ Dates: Open now through Aug. 11, 2024
📍 Location: de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
5. Art of Noise
This May, SFMOMA presents Art of Noise, a multi-sensory exhibition dedicated to the art of music and sound recording over the past century. Some exciting features include a floor-to-ceiling wall of music graphics and album covers featuring SF legends; a journey through the history of sound design, from the phonograph to a wearable haptic suit; and Devon Turnbull’s HiFi 50-person listening room.
🗓️ Dates: May 4 – Aug. 18, 2024
📍Location: SFMOMA, 151 3rd St, San Francisco
6. California: State of Nature
The California Academy of Sciences has debuted a brand-new, permanent exhibition dedicated to the evolution of California’s ecosystems in collaboration with Indigenous advisors. Guests will explore forest, coastal, desert, and city ecosystems through multimedia installations including two augmented reality experiences and several video kiosks.
🎟️ Tickets: California: State of Nature
🗓️ Dates: Just opened
📍Location: California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse Dr, San Francisco
7. !!!!!
This stunning exhibition by painter Rachel Jones explores “Black interiority and personhood” through Jones’ large-scale panel paintings made with oil pastels. The exhibition has many inspirations, one of them being cartoons. We highly recommend you make a stop at MoAD to see the captivating paintings for yourself.
🎟️ Tickets: !!!!!
🗓️ Dates: Open now through Sept. 1, 2024
📍Location: Museum of the African Diaspora, 685 Mission St, San Francisco
8. American Beauty: The Osher Collection of American Art
The de Young Museum presents a collection of delightful Impressionist and Realist artworks from the 19th and 20th centuries. Learn about how these historic paintings influenced the spirit of American culture, with standout works including The Angler (1874) by Winslow Homer, Spanish Bric-à-Brac Shop (1883) by William Merritt Chase, In Virginia (1908) by George Bellows, and Front of Ranchos Church (1930) by Georgia O’Keeffe.
🗓️ Dates: On view now through Oct. 20, 2024
📍 Location: de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
9. Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors
The Visitors features nine large video screens projecting Kjartansson and eight of his friends as they present an intimate musical composition. The result is an hour-long piece in a single take, presented from nine different musical perspectives that are both highly individualized and inextricably linked.
🗓️ Dates: Open now through Oct. 13, 2024
📍Location: SFMOMA, 151 3rd St, San Francisco
10. Indie Folk: New Art and Sounds From the Pacific Northwest
Learn about the Pacific Northwest’s timeless artistic ecosystem, from Indigenous and settler histories to storied craft traditions. This exhibition presents work by 17 intergenerational artists from the PNW who split the difference between functionality and aesthetics with works including woven baskets, beautiful patchwork quilting, and wooden tools.
🎟️ Tickets: Indie Folk: New Art and Sounds From the Pacific Northwest
🗓️ Dates: Open now through June 30, 2024
📍 Location: Museum of Craft and Design, 2569 3rd St, San Francisco
11. Zuan-cho: Kimono Design in Modern Japan
During Japan’s Meiji era (1868-1912), many Japanese artists incorporated newfangled technologies, designs, and Western trends into their work. Traditional kimono design books evolved into print albums called zuan-cho, meaning “design idea books.” The albums were used as style guides and resources for artists, merchants, and patrons throughout Japan, influencing Japanese visual art and textiles in a way we still see today. This exhibition showcases zuan-cho from the Achenbach collection.
🗓️ Dates: Open now through Aug. 25, 2024
📍Location: Legion of Honor, 100 34th Ave, San Francisco
12. Creative Growth: The House That Art Built
Oakland-based nonprofit Creative Growth was the first U.S. organization dedicated to supporting developmentally disabled artists. In celebration of the organization’s 50th anniversary, this new SFMOMA art exhibit presents recent acquisitions from Creative Growth artists, alongside archival material taking guests through the history of the organization.
🗓️ Dates: Open now through Oct. 6, 2024
📍Location: SFMOMA, 151 3rd St, San Francisco
13. Irving Penn
The de Young’s newest exhibition features a large breadth of work from photographer Irving Penn. Known for his fashion photography for Vogue, and portraits of some incredibly famous celebrities and creatives, the exhibition is both visually stunning and a walk through history. A major highlight includes photos of San Francisco counter-culture during the infamous Summer of Love.
🗓️ Dates: Open now through July 21, 2024
📍Location: de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, San Francisco
14. Phoenix Kingdoms: The Last Splendor of China’s Bronze Age
At the end of China’s Bronze Age, two previously flourishing kingdoms were conquered and buried beneath 2,000 years of imperialism. Recent archeological advances have unveiled remarkable works from the Zen and Chu states, revealing them to be more technologically and artistically advanced than ever imagined. This exhibition takes visitors through Zen and Chu art within the kingdoms’ cultural and spiritual histories.
🎟️ Tickets: Phoenix Kingdoms: The Last Splendor of China’s Bronze Age
🗓️ Dates: Open now through July 22, 2024
📍 Location: Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin St, San Francisco
15. Takashi Murakami
The massively popular Murakami: Monsterized exhibition drew thousands of visitors to the Asian Art Museum last year. Although the official exhibition has ended, the Asian Art Museum still has some of the artist’s most vibrant sculptures and neon works on display in a floor-to-ceiling gallery that’s perfect for selfies.
🎟️ Tickets: Only viewable with a ticket to special exhibition Phoenix Kingdoms
🗓️ Dates: On view now through July 22, 2024
📍 Location: Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin St, San Francisco
16. Mr. Roboto
The Museum of Craft and Design presents Mr. Roboto, a collection of work by San Jose State University students. See design experiments exploring the possibilities of working with a robot in creative realms such as calligraphy, photography, 3D printing, and stop-motion animation.
🎟️ Tickets: Mr. Roboto
🗓️ Dates: Open now through June 30, 2024
📍 Location: Museum of Craft and Design, 2569 3rd St, San Francisco
17. Disney Cats & Dogs
The traveling exhibition Disney Cats & Dogs shows the evolution of Disney’s animal-inspired storytelling in conjunction with The Walt Disney Company’s 100th anniversary. Discover over 300 archival concept sketches and paintings from classics including The Aristocats, Lady and the Tramp, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, and Cinderella.
🗓️ Dates: Open now through June 2, 2024
📍 Location: Walt Disney Family Museum, 104 Montgomery St, San Francisco
18. RetroBlakesberg: The Music Never Stopped
A collection of photographs from 1978-2008 by local photographer Jay Blakesberg, who documents San Francisco music events and concerts. At RetroBlakesberg, discover how legendary musicians including the Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchell, Tracy Chapman, Neil Young, Soundgarden, Carlos Santana, and more evolved local music culture.
🎟️ Tickets: RetroBlakesberg: The Music Never Stopped
🗓️ Dates: Open now through July 28, 2024
📍 Location: Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission St, San Francisco
19. Zanele Muholi: Eye Me
South-African visual activist Zanele Muholi presents a collection of photography featuring self-portraits and captures of the South African LGBTQ+ community. See work dating back to 2002, as well as more recent pieces in the realms of painting and sculpture, all of which have a throughline of activism.
🗓️ Dates: Open now through August 11, 2024
📍Location: SFMOMA, 151 3rd St, San Francisco