Arts & Culture in San Francisco

Upcoming arts and culture events in San Francisco: museum exhibitions and free days, gallery openings, dance and theater, film screenings, author talks and cultural festivals. Each listing links to the organizer's own page and shows the date we last checked it, and only upcoming dates are shown. Exhibition hours and ticket rules belong to each venue, so check their page before you go.

Several major museums have standing free admission. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which run the de Young and the Legion of Honor, offer free general admission every Saturday to residents of the nine Bay Area counties and to everyone on the first Tuesday of every month, for the permanent collection galleries. Visitors 17 and under always get in free. SFMOMA admits guests 18 and younger free and also schedules Free Community Days. Outdoors, the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival offers free performing arts from May through October, and each October Lit Crawl, a one-night literary pub crawl, takes over the Mission District.

Sources: Fine Arts Museums of SF, SFMOMA, Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, Lit Crawl SF.