Museums

The Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) contains 20th Century and contemporary pieces, located walking distance from the Moscone Center at 151 Third Street (between Mission and Howard Streets). The Palace of the Legion of Honor contains primarily European works. The De Young Museum and the Asian Art Museum have significant anthropological and non–European holdings. The Palace of Fine Arts, originally built for the 1915 Panama–Pacific Exposition, today houses the Exploratorium, a popular science museum dedicated to teaching through hands–on interaction. The California Academy of Sciences is a natural history museum and hosts the Morrison Planetarium and Steinhart Aquarium. The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco has one of the most comprehensive collections of Asian art in the world.

More Museums

Other museums include the International Museum of Women, the Museum of the African Diaspora, the Contemporary Jewish Museum, the Museum of Craft & Folk Art, the Cartoon Art Museum, and the Mexican Museum.

Eccentric Museums

San Francisco's eccentric nature has also created some offbeat museums dealing in unconventional topics. Such museums and galleries include the Musée Mécanique (dedicated to penny arcade machines), Museum of Ophthalmology, Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum, the Stamp Francisco/Stamp Art Gallery (rubber stamps not postal stamps), Tattoo Art Museum (old tattoo machines and instruments), the UFO, Bigfoot and Loch Ness Monster Museum, and the Wax Museum at Fisherman's Wharf.

Performing Arts

Classical and opera venues in San Francisco include the San Francisco Symphony, the San Francisco Opera and the San Francisco Ballet. They all perform at the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center. San Francisco's Ballet and Opera are some of the oldest continuing performing arts companies in the United States.

More Theaters

The city is also home to the American Conservatory Theater, also known as A.C.T., which has been a leading force in Bay Area performing arts since its arrival in San Francisco in 1967, routinely staging original productions. Additionally, the New Conservatory Theatre Center (NCTC) is known for being an intimate theater that routinely stages original productions by the local, national, and international LGBT community in addition to its family–oriented ones.

The San Francisco Zoo

The San Francisco Zoo cares for a total of about 250 animal species out of which 39 have been deemed endangered or threatened.