We create, experiment, test, and build nearly everything at the Exploratorium ourselves, always looking for the most interesting and important ideas to pursue, often pushing the limits of what’s possible. In this sense, we’re a classic research-and-development organization, constantly creating new activities, websites, events, artworks, exhibits, and more.

The hundreds of exhibits you see when you visit are built in our shop, which is visible to visitors. We conduct visitor research and evaluation about our exhibits, and tinker with them over time. The museum constantly changes and evolves as new exhibits and exhibitions are created, tweaked, or retired.

We continually push the boundaries in cyberspace, too, by streaming live webcasts from the museum and remote sites, creating mobile applications, experimenting with visualizations of natural and urban systems, using telepresence technologies to connect to research ships at sea; experimenting with augmented reality; and building a virtual museum in Second Life that features interactive exhibits and public programs.

By making science visible, touchable, and accessible to a wide variety of people—at the museum, online, and in the classroom—our explore-for-yourself way of learning and teaching influences science education worldwide. Our professional development programs provide educators with the skills, tools, and support they need to apply inquiry-based learning and teaching in their classes. Our Lifelong Learning programs—for home schoolers, families, and adults, for example—bring learning by doing directly to a diverse group of people. We also design programs that make connections between the traditionally separate worlds of formal (school) and informal (museum) education and understanding.

Our community of more than four hundred Exploratorium staff members—scientists, artists, educators, exhibit developers, writers, designers, and more—forms the creative and administrative core for everything we do. We constantly brainstorm, evaluate, create, and invent the Exploratorium—but we don’t work in a vacuum. Throughout our history, we’ve invited scientists, poets, visual artists, musicians, and interesting thinkers into the Exploratorium to infuse our community with inspiration and new ideas, and to help us develop new directions for the museum.

We also reach out to the community in lots of ways. For example, our Educational Outreach program links the Exploratorium with community-based organizations serving inner-city children, teens, and families. Our ExNET program, an exhibit and teaching network, shares the fruits of our experience with science centers worldwide. We also partner with other institutions—NASA and NOAA, for example, on initiatives that foster a public understanding of science—and we work with other science centers on collaborative projects. We extend our community, too, through our website, which gets approximately 24 million visits annually, and through social networking including Facebook and other online communities.

SEAGLASS Restaurant is a casual, waterside venue with stunning views located at the east end of the museum. Chef Loretta Keller has created family-friendly, multicultural, locally sourced menus that showcase small producers. The menus change seasonally but may include tacos and quesadillas, Welsh rarebit (a riff on grilled cheese), pizzas, salads, and sandwiches. You’ll also find fresh seafood and sushi that meets Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch guidelines. SEAGLASS offers natural soft drinks, organic and fair trade coffees and teas, and sparkling house-made drinking vinegar beverages. It also features a bar that showcases artisanal distillers, many organic, and a thoughtfully curated wine and beer list. The bar itself incorporates Icy Bodies, an exhibit by Exploratorium Senior Artist Shawn Lani, into its design.

Food Tricycles—solar-powered, Dutch-style tricycles—are parked around the perimeter of Pier 15, selling coffee, baked goods, and organic soft-serve ice cream.

The Exploratorium is the perfect event venue for formal dinners, cocktail receptions, launch parties, or just about anything you can dream up! At the Exploratorium, guests are immersed in a vibrant landscape of sights, sounds, and curiosities, with hundreds of engaging hands-on exhibits. The Exploratorium is the perfect place for unique and unforgettable events. Internationally recognized as the premier museum of science, art, and human perception for more than forty years, we begin a new era in the spring of 2013 in a dramatic new setting on the historic San Francisco waterfront. At Pier 15, the museum is divided into galleries filled with hundreds of exhibits ranging from mechanical contraptions to artworks highlighting the beauty of the physical phenomena that surround us. Galleries will be available to rent either individually or in combination.

Our stores (there are two at Pier 15) were both inspired by our onsite exhibit workshop, where our exhibits are designed and built. Look for a large, interactive triple vortex exhibit in the middle of the main store; a store fixture that converts into Scrapple, an interactive sound exhibit; and a cherry-red Art-O-Mat vending machine that dispenses original artworks. The stores carry unusual objects, games, and books for kids and adults that focus on science, art, and technology. They also sell Exploratorium clothing and gift items that are made by local artisans and in-house. All purchases help to support our educational mission.

Exploratorium Membership is a great value! For a family of four, a Family Membership pays for itself in as little as two visits to the museum. All Members enjoy FREE admission year-round; subscriptions to our quarterly, explore; a discount on purchases in the Exploratorium Store; discounted admission to the famous Tactile Dome, access to our new Members Room, and much more!