Exploratorium

About the Business

Specialties

Homegrown, handmade and hands-on, there's no place in the world like the Exploratorium. Now that we're moving to Pier 15, there's more to explore than ever before. Called "the best science museum in the world," by Scientific American, the Exploratorium is an experimental, hands-on museum, designed to spark curiosity--regardless of age. Like a scientific funhouse, art studio and an experimental laboratory all rolled into one! Come over and touch, play and tinker with hundreds of exhibits and activities, exploring sound and hearing, light and optics, life sciences and much more.

History

Established in 1969.

On April 17, 2013, the Exploratorium opened to the public at it's new home at Pier 15, on San Francisco's historic Embarcadero. The Exploratorium was conceived by physicist Frank Oppenheimer (1912-1985). It was Dr. Oppenheimer's vision to create a collection of interactive exhibits that would make natural phenomena accessible and understandable to everyone. Dr. Oppenheimer secured a home for his museum in San Francisco, at the Palace of Fine Arts, a vacant remnant of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915. The doors opened in 1969, with a few dozen exhibits. The museum grew rapidly, though, as more and more new exhibits were built, and the "shop" established itself as the heart of the museum. Today, there are hundreds of exhibits in the museum visited by over half a million people each year.