As we enter a new month, many exhibits in San Francisco are getting refreshed and replaced. 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. Yayoi Kusama: Infinite Love
San Franciscans now have an opportunity to step into Yayoi Kusama’s famous immersive mirror rooms at this highly-sought-after SFMOMA art exhibit. Explore Kusama’s classic Infinity Mirror Room, which features a collection of suspended, luminous dots and spheres; Dreaming of Earth’s Sphericity, I would Offer My Love, a sculptural white cube filled with transparent acrylic dots; and LOVE IS CALLING, a darkened room with inflatable luminous forms that gradually shift colors.
This is the most popular art exhibit in San Francisco right now, with tickets selling out well in advance. Although previously scheduled through September, the exhibition will now close at the end of May; however, one of Kusama’s infinity mirror rooms will remain on display at SFMOMA until January 2025.
🎟️ Tickets: Yayoi Kusama: Infinite Love requires special exhibition tickets
🗓️ Dates: Open now through May 28, 2024
📍 Location: SFMOMA, 151 3rd St, 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
3. 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
4. Lhola Amira: Facing the Future
This solo exhibition by Lhola Amira features the site-specific spiritual portal Philisa: Zinza Mphefumlo Wami (2022), which guests may enter to cleanse wounds, honor ancestors, and foster connections. The accompanying film IRMANDADE: The Shape of Water in Pindorama documents Amira’s journey through Bahia, Brazil.
🗓️ Dates: Open now through May 5, 2024
📍Location: de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
5. 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
6. 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: Apr. 6-Aug. 25, 2024
📍Location: Legion of Honor, 100 34th Ave, San Francisco
7. 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: Apr. 6 – Oct. 6, 2024
📍Location: SFMOMA, 151 3rd St, San Francisco
8. 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: Apr. 19-July 22, 2024
📍 Location: Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin St, San Francisco
9. 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
10. First Light: Rituals of Glass and Neon Art
Discover the craft of neon art at this breathtaking new exhibition by She Bends, an organization dedicated to creating an equitable future for neon. First Light displays both large-scale and smaller pieces using neon, glass, and plasma in a contemplation of light as a transformative force.
🎟️ Tickets: First Light
🗓️ Dates: Open now through Apr. 28, 2024
📍 Location: Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission St, San Francisco
11. 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
12. 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
13. 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 has a throughline of activism.
🗓️ Dates: Open now through August 11, 2024
📍Location: SFMOMA, 151 3rd St, San Francisco
14. 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
15. !!!!! at Museum of African Diaspora
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.
🗓️ Dates: Open now through Sep 1, 2024
📍Location: 685 Mission St, San Francisco
16. Irving Penn at the de Young
The de Young’s newest exhibition features a large breadth of work from iconic 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
📍Location: 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, San Francisco
By Jamie Ferrell and Dana Flynn