Dozens of fascinating art 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.
Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm
Installation view of ‘Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm,’ de Young, San Francisco, 2025. Photo by Gary Sexton. Image courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
In this recently-extended San Francisco exhibition, you can explore over 250 of Paul McCartney’s personal photographs at the height of Beatlemania, as well as video clips and archival pieces. McCartney took the photos himself on his Pentax camera and just unearthed them in 2020 to the delight of fans around the world. See captures of the band’s journey to stardom between December 1963 and February 1964.
🗓️ Dates: Closing soon! Open now through Oct. 5, 2025
📍 Location: de Young Museum – 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
🎟️ Tickets: Paul McCartney Photographs requires special timed tickets to the de Young Museum.
Black Gold: Stories Untold
Cosmo Whyte, ‘Soldiers,’ 2025. Courtesy of the artist and commissioned by FOR-SITE. Photo by Jan Sturmann.
FOR-SITE presents a popular free exhibition highlighting the experiences of African Americans in California between the Gold Rush and the Reconstruction period (1848-1877). The installations include work by 17 contemporary artists and collectives, all of which speak to the impact that Black communities had on California’s cultural, social, and political life. This popular exhibition is especially impactful as presented in SF’s historic Fort Point, which is the only Civil War-era fort on the West Coast.
🗓️ Dates: June 6 – Nov. 2, 2025 (10am-5pm Thursday-Monday)
📍 Location: Fort Point National Historic Site, 201 Marine Dr, San Francisco, CA 94129
🎟️ Tickets: Black Gold: Stories Untold is free to visit at Fort Point.
Art of Manga
“Art of Manga” on view at the de Young museum, San Francisco, 2025. Photographs by Gary Sexton, courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Starting this September, the de Young Museum will present the first major manga exhibition in the United States. Art of Manga features over 700 works from ten prolific artists, including Chiba Tetsuya, Akatsuka Fujio, Yoshinaga Fumi, and more. Learn about the evolution of manga since the 1970s and its cultural impact today.
🗓️ Dates: Just opened! Sept. 27, 2025 – Jan. 25, 2026
📍 Location: de Young Museum – 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
🎟️ Tickets: Art of Manga is included with general admission to the Legion of Honor
Manet & Morisot
Berthe Morisot, “Summer’s Day,” ca. 1879. Oil on canvas, 45.7 x 75.2 cm, Sir Hugh Lane Bequest, 1917, The National Gallery, London. In partnership with Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin. Image courtesy of The National Gallery, London
This Legion of Honor exhibition delves into the creative back-and-forth between Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot, two key figures in Impressionism. Rather than represent Morisot as Manet’s muse, it examines how their 15-year friendship shaped both artists’ work, including how Manet pulled inspiration from Morisot.
🗓️ Dates: Oct. 11, 2025 – March 1, 2026
📍Location: Legion of Honor – 100 34th Ave, San Francisco, CA 94121
🎟️ Tickets: Manet & Morisot requires special admission tickets to the Legion of Honor
Ferlinghetti for San Francisco
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021), Patrick Surgalski (b. 1953) (Printer) “Lovers at Sea,” 1992 Lithograph, 20 x 26 in. (50.8 x 66.04 cm) Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Gift of the Lawrence Ferlinghetti Artworks Trust, 2022.22.18. Photograph by Jorge Bachmann, courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco © Lawrence Ferlinghetti / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is one of San Francisco’s prolific cultural figures, with a legacy that continues on through the City Lights bookstore. This exhibition takes visitors through Ferlinghetti’s work in printmaking, including etching, lithography, and letterpress. Explore his messages of activism and human resilience via figurative work across media.
🗓️ Dates: July 19, 2025 – March 22, 2026
📍 Location: Legion of Honor – 100 34th Ave, San Francisco, CA 94121
🎟️ Tickets: Ferlinghetti for San Francisco is included with general admission to the Legion of Honor
Unbound: Art, Blackness, & the Universe
The Museum of the African Diaspora reopens this October after major renovations, with a new exhibition that reimagines Blackness as a cosmic and ever-expanding concept through themes of maps, myth, and technology. See a collection of works by different artists in the realms of painting, sculpture, installation, and video.
🗓️ Dates: Oct. 1, 2025 – Aug. 16, 2026
📍 Location: Museum of the African Diaspora, 685 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94105
🎟️ Tickets: Unbound is included with general admission to the MoAD
Arts of Indigenous America
Installation view of “Arts of Indigenous America,” at the de Young Museum, San Francisco, 2025. Photograph by Gary Sexton. Image courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
This new reinstallation of Indigenous American art presents four refreshed galleries in the de Young Museum, each of which explores part of the theme “Relationship to Place.” See works spanning over a thousand years of Native history, including the opening exhibition, Rooted in Place, which honors the histories of Northern Californian Native communities.
🗓️ Dates: Aug. 26, 2025 – Aug. 31, 2028 (Rooted in Place exhibition closes Dec. 6, 2026)
📍 Location: de Young Museum – 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
🎟️ Tickets: Arts of Indigenous America is included with general admission to the de Young Museum.
Wunderkammer: The Collection of Susan Beech
Art jewelry collector Susan Beech presents a dazzling display of nearly 100 stunning jewelry pieces, presented in the style of an 18th-century “Wunderkammer,” or cabinet of curiosities. A Wunderkammer traditionally housed objects as both a display of wealth and as an examination of humanist philosophies. See how Beech’s simultaneously luxurious and playful cabinet of curiosities provokes deeper thoughts about your understanding of the world.
🗓️ Dates: Oct. 4, 2025 – Feb. 8, 2026
📍 Location: Museum of Craft and Design – 2569 3rd St, San Francisco, CA 94107
🎟️ Tickets: Wunderkammer is included with general admission to the Museum of Craft and Design
BigPicture: Natural World Photography
‘Aquatic,’ Melanie Müller, via California Academy of Sciences
The California Academy of Sciences presents the 12th annual BigPicture exhibition, featuring winning nature photographs carefully chosen by a panel of judges out of 8,000 submissions. See breathtaking captures from all over the world, demonstrating the artistry involved in capturing natural scenes in a fleeting moment.
🗓️ Dates: Opening Oct. 4, 2025
📍 Location: California Academy of Sciences – 55 Music Concourse Dr, San Francisco, CA 94118
🎟️ Tickets: BigPicture is included with general admission to the Academy of Sciences
Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine)
‘Kara Walker: Fortuna and the Immortality Garden’ installation, courtesy of SFMOMA
SFMOMA commissioned artist Kara Walker, known for her work examining the exploitation of race and sexuality, to create this site-specific installation in the Roberts Family Gallery. See Walker’s automatons trapped in ritualistic cycles, enacting the memorialization of trauma in contemporary society. The mechanized sculptures are set in a landscape of black obsidian, which is thought to be healing.
🎟️ Tickets: Viewable to the public for free at SFMOMA
🗓️ Dates: July 1, 2024 – Spring 2026
📍 Location: SFMOMA, 151 3rd St, San Francisco
From enormous immersive works to intimate gallery showcases, these SF art exhibitions and museum installations are worth an afternoon out of the house. Whether you’re hosting guests or want to take yourself on a solo date, there’s always something new to see in San Francisco. Which one will you visit next?
Featured image: Hank Willis Thomas, Solidarity, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Pace Gallery and produced by FOR-SITE. Photo by Jan Sturmann.