3601 Lyon Street
San Francisco, CA 94123
Tel: 415-563-7337
Housed within the walls of the Palace of Fine Arts, the Exploratorium is a collage of 650 interactive exhibits in the areas of science, art, and human perception. The Exploratorium stands in the vanguard of the movement of the "museum as educational center." It provides access to, and information about, science, nature, art and technology.
The Exploratorium's educational approach provides a maximum exposure to the phenomena of science in an environment with a minimum of apparent structure. What seems like the random excitement of blinking and beckoning exhibits is actually a very carefully devised science curriculum, appropriate for the informal and formal teaching of science.
Three dimensional exhibits within the Exploratorium offer the kind of experiential learning that is difficult, if not virtually impossible, to obtain through any other medium, whether it be the classroom, books or television. The exhibits fall within thirteen broad subject areas. These include: Light, color, sound music, motion, animal behavior, electricity, heat and temperature, language, patterns, hearing, touch, vision, waves and resonance, and weather.
The Exploratorium is also known for its unconventional approach to "culture" in a scientific and technological age. Each year, the Exploratorium invites from four to six visual artists and four to six performing artists to create works while in residence at the Exploratorium.
Since the Exploratorium's inception, the museum's exhibits and programs have focused on human perception: how do we see, hear, smell, feel and otherwise experience the world around us? In the future we will expand that focus, going beyond perception to include all of cognition--in other words, using the mind to understand the very workings of the mind itself.
Website: http://www.exploratorium.org