City: San Francisco

San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum was originally opened in 1966 as a wing in Golden Gate Park’s de Young Museum. The first art pieces displayed in the museum’s gallery were donated by noted Chicago industrialist Avery Brundage, who first pledged his donation as early as 1959. Brundage’s pledge challenged the city to raise the funds to create the Asian Art Museum. The Asian Art Museum remained in Golden Gate Park for 35 years. During this time, Brundage continued to collect until his death in 1975. He bequeathed his collection to the museum, which by then had grown into an independent entity with its own governing body, staff, library, budget, and departments dedicated to both photography and art conservation. In 1994, San Francisco voters overwhelmingly approved a measure to renovate the old Main Library across from City Hall and move the Asian Art Museum to that location. It took several years of planning, designing, and construction, but the museum finally opened the doors to its new location in March of 2003. Some of the museum’s most incredible exhibits include art pieces that are more than 6,000 years old. Visitors can enjoy a variety of events and programming options, including the Village Artist Corner on the first Sunday of every month.

Aquarium of the Bay at PIER 39 is dedicated to enabling conversations on climate resilience and ocean conservation globally. They also hope to inspire local actionable change through the protection and preservation of the San Francisco Bay ecosystems. The aquarium houses more than 20,000 marine animals including rays, sharks, octopus, jellyfish, anchovies, otters and more. They are located in the historic San Francisco waterfront at PIER 39. For visitors who want an up-close and personal experience with marine life, they have Touch The Bay exhibit. This gallery gives visitors the opportunity to touch animals such as sharks, anemones, rays, sea stars, and sea cucumbers. Inside the Bay Lab, you’ll also find land dwelling animals such as chinchillas, tortoises, frogs, and more. These exhibits also explain to visitors how associated habitats have been impacted by global climate change.

The history of San Francisco’s Alcatraz Island is truly fascinating. The island, affectionately known as “The Rock” has been a Civil War fortress, a bird sanctuary, an infamous federal prison, home to the first lighthouse on the West Coast, and the birthplace of the Native American Red Power movement. For its significance to our nation’s history, the island is now a National Historic Landmark. During your visit you can learn about some of the ongoing historical preservation projects taking place on the island. Alcatraz Island offers visitors a variety of experiences. You can learn about the nesting, mating, and behaviors of colonial nesting seabirds, birds whose ancestors have been visiting the island long before humans first discovered it. Visitors can embark on a guided audio tour of the Alcatraz Cellhouse and listen to some of the fascinating stories from the island’s penitentiary era. Or, you can study the role that the fort at Alcatraz Island played in the Civil War and learn how troops first came to be stationed on the island in 1859.

Between 1870 and 1876 William Hammond Hall, an army-trained engineer, surveyed the site, created the preliminary designs, and stabilized the sand dunes of the park to set the foundation for the first 60,000 trees he planted. Finally, in 1926 the San Francisco Botanical Garden became a reality. Helene Strybing provided the funds to establish an arboretum and garden in Golden Gate Park. Ground was broken in the 1930s. The garden went on to provide jobs for unemployed workers during the Great Depression. In 2015 the garden celebrated its 75th Anniversary through a community celebration. On Christmas Day in 2017, the garden received a record breaking amount of visitors. 10,689 people came in a single day. In the summertime, kids entering kindergarten through 3rd grade can attend an all-outdoors day camp at the Botanical Gardens called Garden Camp.