7 mesmerizing museums near BART

History buff, art addict, cultural anthropologist or experimental crafter? Want to challenge yourself to a museum boot camp? Hit up these seven BARTable museums in seven days to fill your calendar with a beautiful blitz of education and inspiration. Check out the ongoing free museum admission days included below.

If you can’t do seven museums in seven days, how about just SFMOMA’s seven floors?

SFMOMA

Montgomery St. (SF)

Stunning, sleek and spacey architecture will have you gawking before you’ve even entered BAMPFA’s doors on Center Street in Berkeley; the building’s exterior itself is a massive and much-talked about piece of art.

BAMPFA

Downtown Berkeley

Another three-tiered building, OMCA clearly delineates each of its three galleries with a theme: art, history and science.

Oakland Museum of California

Lake Merritt (Oakland)

As the home to one of the largest collections of Asian art in the world, the Asian Art Museum holds more than 18,000 pieces spanning, fittingly, the largest continent in the world.

Asian Art Museum

Civic Center/UN Plaza (SF)

Need to hear inspiration? Listen to interviews with local civil rights activists, writers and musicians at the AAMLO’s incredible oral history collection.

African American Museum and Library at Oakland

12th St. Oakland City Center

When you’ve come to a massive blue cube that sits slanted against a brick building, you’ve arrived at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in the Yerba Buena neighborhood of downtown San Francisco.

Contemporary Jewish Museum

Powell St. (SF)

This is where you can bring the kids for a multifaceted hands-on experience in arts, crafts, tech and pure play.

Children’s Creativity Museum

Powell St. (SF)

by Linda Koffman

Linda Koffman is an SF-based freelance writer and editor. Also a beginner gardener by day/performing songwriter by night, she feels grateful to live a life of extremes balancing plenty of contemplative silence with rocking out in a band. When not writing, she keeps her hands busy (and dirty) with old guitar strings and soil, and enjoys engaging with the Bay Area’s diverse environmental and cultural beauty. She loves puns to a fault and shamelessly laughs at her own jokes.

by Felicia Kieselhorst

Felicia is a freelance photographer based in Emeryville. Wedding and product photography are her bread and butter but she often takes on gigs in different subjects, including shooting for BARTable! Whatever the job, Felicia can often be found traveling via BART from her home station, MacArthur. When not working she spends her time gardening, kayaking around the Bay, watching A’s games at O.Co, or walking her pooch Qispi.