Every single month, local museums refresh and replace dozens of fascinating art exhibits in San Francisco. 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.
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: Closing soon! Open now through Feb. 1, 2026
📍 Location: de Young Museum – 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
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: Closing soon! Open now through 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
KAWS: FAMILY
KAWS: FAMILY surveys three decades of the artist’s work across paintings, sculptures, collaborations, and collectible objects that reflect shared emotions and pop culture. The exhibition is centered around the monumental bronze sculpture FAMILY (2021), highlighting KAWS’s iconic characters to explore themes of kinship, vulnerability, and contemporary cultural memory.
🗓️ Dates: Open now through May 3, 2026
📍 Location: SFMOMA, 151 3rd St, San Francisco
Video Craft
Senga Nengudi, Warp Trance, 2007. Installation view, Another Energy: Power to Continue Challenging – 16 Women Artists from around the World, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2021. Photo by Furukawa Yuya. Photo courtesy of Mori Art Museum, Tokyo.
The Museum of Craft and Design explores the intersection between film and video with more traditional craft media such as ceramics, textiles, and glass. From brightly colored clay works to a pixelated quilt, the works in this new showcase examine the juxtaposition of the “ephemeral nature of the screen” and the distinctly tangible practices of material craft.
🗓️ Dates: Feb. 28 – Aug. 16, 2026
📍 Location: Museum of Craft and Design – 2569 3rd St, San Francisco, CA 94107
🎟️ Tickets: Video Craft is included with general admission to the Museum of Craft and Design
Manet & Morisot
Installation view of “Manet & Morisot” at the de Young Museum, San Francisco, 2025. Photograph by Gary Sexton. Image courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
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: Open now through 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
Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love
This colorful exhibition at SFMOMA presents over 80 paintings by Suzanne Jackson, influenced by her fascination and respect for the natural world. Take a look back at her groundbreaking career with works beginning as early as the 1960s, organized chronologically and culminating in a large-scale sculptural installation that reflects on today’s environmental crisis and migration.
🗓️ Dates: Open now through Mar. 1, 2026
📍 Location: SFMOMA, 151 3rd St, San Francisco
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: Open now through March 22, 2026
📍 Location: Legion of Honor – 100 34th Ave, San Francisco, CA 94121
Bouquets to Art 2026
Every year for the past four decades, the de Young Museum has welcomed floral designers into its galleries to present stunning floral arrangements inspired by the art itself. Bouquets to Art returns for less than a week at the beginning of March, now having expanded to the Legion of Honor as well.
🗓️ Dates: Mar. 3-8, 2026
📍 Location: Legion of Honor and de Young Museum, San Francisco
Unbound: Art, Blackness, & the Universe
After major renovations, the Museum of the African Diaspora reopened in October 2025 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: Open now through 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: Open now through 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
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: Open now through Apr. 12, 2026
📍 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: Open now through 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?