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African Diaspora

Yerba Buena
685 Mission Street
415-358-7200

A new museum dedicated to the diasporan histories of people of African origin and their influence and adaptation throughout the world. This museum focuses on experiences in North America, the Caribbean, and South America. The museum’s exhibits trace the history and legacy of the slave trade, fights for freedom in the African continent and the New World, music of African influence or origin, and contemporary multicultural and multiethnic societies. $10 adult admission.

Hours
Wednesday–Sunday, 12:00 PM–4:00 PM


Alcatraz Island

Fisherman’s Wharf
Boats Leave from Pier 33
415-981-7625

Alcatraz is an island located in the San Francisco Bay, 1.5 miles offshore. Often referred to as “The Rock,” the small island early on served as a lighthouse, a military fortification, a military prison, and a Federal Bureau of Prisons federal prison until 1963. In 1972, Alcatraz became a national recreation area and is currently a historic site operated by the National Park Service. $26 day admission, $33 night admission.

Hours
Open daily, 9:00 AM–5:00 PM


Aquarium of the Bay

Fisherman’s Wharf
Pier 39
415-623-5300

This is a public aquarium that is focused on local aquatic animals from the San Francisco Bay and neighboring waters. It has over fifty sharks from species such as Sevengill sharks, leopard sharks, soupfins, spiny dogfish, brown smoothhounds, and angel sharks. The aquarium also has skates, bat rays, and thousands of other animals including eels, flatfish, wrasse, gobies, kelpfish, pricklebacks, ronquil, sculpin, and sturgeons. $17 adult admission.

Hours
Monday–Thursday, 10:00 AM–6:00 PM
Friday–Sunday, 10:00 AM–7:00 PM


Asian Art Museum

Civic Center
200 Larkin Street
415-581-3500

This museum has one of the most comprehensive collections of Asian art in the world, with approximately 17,000 works of art and artifacts from all major Asian countries and traditions, some of which are as much as 6,000 years old. Major galleries are devoted to the arts and South Asia, West Asia (including Persia), Southeast Asia, the Himalayas, China, Korea, and Japan. There are 2,500 works on display in the permanent collection. $12 adult admission.

Hours
Tuesday–Sunday, 10:00 AM–5:00 PM


Cable Car Museum

Nob Hill
1201 Mason Street
415-474-1887

This museum contains historical and explanatory exhibits on the San Francisco cable car system, which itself can be regarded as a working museum. It includes several examples of old cable cars, together with smaller exhibits and a shop. The museum is part of the complex that also houses the cable car power house that drives the cables and the car depot. Free admission.

Hours
Open daily, 10:00 AM–5:00 PM


California Academy of Sciences

Golden Gate Park
55 Music Concourse Drive
415-379-8000

The California Academy of Sciences is among the largest museums of natural history in the world. The academy began in 1853 as a learned society and still carries out a large amount of original research, with exhibits and education becoming significant endeavors of the museum during the twentieth century. $30 adult admission.

Hours
Monday–Saturday, 9:30 AM–5:00 PM
Sunday, 11:00 AM–5:00 PM


California Historical Society

SoMa
678 Mission Street
415-357-1848

This is California’s official state historical society and was founded in 1871. The Society is a statewide, privately funded, nonprofit organization. It operates the North Baker Research Library, which contains a collection of manuscripts, maps, posters, printed ephemera, books, and pamphlets. The library also features works by Eadweard Muybridge and Ansel Adams. $3 adult admission.

Hours
Wednesday–Saturday, 12:00 PM–4:30 PM


Cartoon Art Museum

SoMa
655 Mission Street
415-227-8666

The Cartoon Art Museum specializes in the art of comics and cartoons. It is the only museum in the Western United States dedicated to the preservation and exhibition of all forms of cartoon art. The permanent collection features some 6,000 pieces, including original animation cels, comic book pages, and early newspaper comic strips. $7 adult admission.

Hours
Tuesday–Sunday, 11:00 AM–5:00 PM


Chinese Historical Society of America

Chinatown
965 Clay Street
415-391-1188 ext. 101

The Chinese Historical Society of America (CHSA) is the oldest and largest archive and history center documenting the Chinese American experience in the United States. Through exhibitions, publications, and educational and public programming, the Society promotes the contributions and legacy of Chinese America. $3 adult admission.

Hours
Tuesday–Friday, 12:00 PM–5:00 PM
Saturday, 12:00 PM–4:00 PM


Contemporary Jewish Museum

SoMa
736 Mission Street
415-655-7800

The Contemporary Jewish Museum was founded in 1984 with the goal of offering contemporary perspectives on Jewish culture, history, art, and ideas. The museum doesn’t have a permanent collection; instead, it curates and hosts a broad array of exhibitions throughout the year. $10 adult admission.

Hours
Thursday, 1:00 PM–8:00 PM
Friday–Tuesday, 11:00 AM–5:00 PM


M. H. de Young Memorial Museum

Golden Gate Park
50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive
415-750-3600

The M. H. de Young Memorial Museum is a fine arts museum, which received the right to display the bulk of the organization’s anthropological holdings. These include significant pre-Hispanic works from Teotihuacan and Peru, as well as indigenous tribal art from sub-Saharan Africa. The museum also showcases American art from the seventeenth through twenty-first centuries, international contemporary art, textiles, and costumes, and art from the Americas, Pacific, and Africa. $10 adult admission.

Hours
Tuesday–Sunday, 9:30 AM–5:15 PM
Friday, 9:30 AM–8:45 PM


Exploratorium

Marina District
Palace of the Fine Arts
3601 Lyon Street
415-561-0360

The Exploratorium is a museum full of hundreds of hands-on exhibits — most of them made onsite — that mix science and art. The museum offers visitors a variety of ways — including exhibits, webcasts, websites, and events — to explore and understand the world around them. It aims to promote museums as informal education centers. $15 adult admission.

Hours
Tuesday–Sunday, 10:00 AM–5:00 PM


GLBT History Museum

Castro District
4127 18th Street
415-621-1107

Recently completed in late 2010, the GLBT Museum includes 1,600 square feet of gallery and program space. It features a debut exhibition that celebrates the San Francisco GLBT Historical Society’s twenty-fifth anniversary: “Our Vast Queer Past: Celebrating San Francisco’s GLBT History.” An inspirational object was chosen from virtually every year the Society has been acquiring collections in order to raise new questions about familiar gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender stories and evoke largely untold stories that speak eloquently about diversity. $5 adult admission.

Hours
Wednesday–Saturday, 11:00 AM–7:00 PM
Sunday, 12:00 PM–5:00 PM


Legion of Honor Museum

Lincoln Park
100 34th Avenue
415-750-3600

The California Palace of the Legion of Honor is a fine arts museum in Lincoln Park. The name (often shortened to Legion of Honor) is used both for the museum collection and for the neoclassical building in which it is housed. It displays a collection spanning more than 6,000 years of ancient and European art and houses the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts. One of the exhibits is “Pissarro’s People,” bringing together over 100 works of art including some 50 paintings and numerous works on paper made over the course of Pissaro’s entire career. $10 adult admission.

Hours
Tuesday–Sunday, 9:30 AM–5:15 PM


Museum of Craft and Folk Art

SoMa
51 Yerba Buena Lane
415-227-4888

The Museum of Craft and Folk Art provides innovative exhibitions and educational programs that are designed to connect with and inspire diverse communities. As the only folk art museum in Northern California, the museum is known for a rich offering of focused and unique exhibitions of traditional and contemporary folk art and crafts from around the world — demonstrating how folk art, contemporary crafts, and fine art are all part of the same continuum. $5 adult admission.

Hours
Wednesday–Saturday, 11:00 AM–6:00 PM


Museum of Modern Art

SoMa
151 Third Street
415-357-4000

This museum holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to twentieth century art. The museum’s current collection includes over 26,000 works of painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, design, and media arts. The museum also houses a research library that contains extensive resources pertaining to modern and contemporary art, including books, periodicals, artists’ files, and lecture recordings. $18 adult admission. 

Hours
Thursday, 11:00 AM–8:45 PM
Friday–Tuesday, 11:00 AM–5:45 PM


Ripley’s Believe It or Not!

Fisherman’s Wharf
175 Jefferson Street
415-202-9850

Ripley’s Believe It or Not! is a franchise founded by Robert LeRoy Ripley, which deals in bizarre events and items so strange and unusual that readers might question the claims. The franchise has grown since the first exhibit in 1933, and as of December 2010, there are thirty-two Ripley’s Believe It or Not! odditoriums around the world. Odditoriums, in the spirit of Believe It or Not! are often more than simple museums cluttered with curiosities. San Francisco’s has two floors and over 10,000 square feet filled with the strange, the unusual, and the unbelievable! $17 adult admission.

Hours
Sunday–Thursday, 10:00 AM–10:00 PM
Friday–Saturday, 10:00 AM–12:00 AM


Walt Disney Family Museum

The Presidio
104 Montgomery Street
415 345 6800

This museum is an American museum that features the life and legacy of Walt Disney. The lobby displays 248 awards that Disney won during his career, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and many Academy Awards. There are ten permanent galleries, ranging from the beginning of Disney’s childhood to society’s response to his death in 1966. $20 adult admission.

Hours
Wednesday–Monday, 10:00 AM–6:00 PM


Wax Museum

Fisherman’s Wharf
145 Jefferson Street
800-439-4305

This museum is one of San Francisco’s largest wax museums known to date and has a population of more than 250 international wax figures. There are many exhibits to witness and enjoy — the exhibits they present for the public to observe are Hall of Religions, King Tut, Chamber of Horrors, Sports, and History. In these exhibits there is a cornucopia of history to examine; for example, one of the most popular is the birth of Christ. $14 adult admission.

Hours
Monday–Friday, 10:00 AM–9:00 PM
Saturday–Sunday, 9:00 AM–11:00 PM


Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

SoMa
701 Mission Street
415-978-2700

This Center, which opened in 1993, is the city’s cultural facility, similar to New York’s Lincoln Center, but far more fun on the outside. The Center’s two buildings offer music, theater, dance, and visual arts programs and shows. James Stewart Polshek designed the 755-seat theater and Fumihiko Maki designed the Galleries and Arts Forum, which features three galleries and a space designed especially for dance. Cutting-edge computer art, multimedia shows, contemporary exhibitions, and performances occupy the center’s high-tech galleries. $7 adult admission.

Hours
Thursday–Saturday, 12:00 PM–8:00 PM
Sunday, 12:00 PM–6:00 PM

 

This website contains archived issues of Religious Studies News published online from March 2010 to May 2013, and PDF versions of print editions published from Winter 2001 to October 2009.

This site also contains archived issues of Spotlight on Teaching (May 1999 to May 2013) and Spotlight on Theological Education (March 2007 to March 2013).

For current issues of RSN, beginning with the October 2013 issue, please see here.


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