Here are the 17 best museums in San Francisco

Located in the middle of Golden Gate Park, this 130-year-old museum—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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s handwritten notes on bad reviews he received (“Thanx for showing me these shit-ass reviews,” for instance) and more. 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—and City Lights is right across the street—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.

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. The museum will turn 100 in November.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Located across from Yerba Buena Park, the 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.

Don’t miss: Leah Rosenberg’s kaleidoscopic installation When One Sees a Rainbow, on exhibit through April 2025. This is the first artwork designed specifically for the museum’s 65-foot-high Yud Gallery and relates to the Jewish practice of saying a blessing when seeing a rainbow.