The Exploratorium is a museum of science, technology, and arts in San Francisco, California. Founded by physicist and educator Frank Oppenheimer in 1969, the museum was originally in the Palace of Fine Arts where it founded Pi Day in 1988. The museum relocated in 2013 to Piers 15 and 17 on San Francisco's waterfront.
The museum has over 1,000 participatory exhibits divided into several galleries, mainly separated by content. Since its inception, the Exploratorium has expanded into other domains and has inspired more museums to adopt hands-on learning-by-doing exhibits.
History
Founding and early years
The Exploratorium was conceived by Frank Oppenheimer, an experimental physicist and university professor. Oppenheimer, who worked on the Manhattan Project with his brother J. Robert Oppenheimer, was diverted from an academic career when he was forced to resign from his position at the University of Minnesota in 1949 as a result of an inquiry by the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was blacklisted from academic positions across the country and withdrew with his family to run a Colorado cattle ranch for almost a decade.
Oppenheimer also began assisting local high school students with their science projects, eventually becoming the only science teacher at the high school in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. The field trips and experiments he did with his high school students would become a blueprint for the hands-on methods of teaching and learning he would later bring to the Exploratorium.
When Oppenheimer was invited to join the University of Colorado's physics department in 1959, he found himself less interested in traditional laboratory research and much more interested in exploring methods of provoking curiosity and inquiry. He received a grant from the National Science Foundation, which he used to build models of nearly a hundred scientific experiments. This "Library of Experiments" would become the core of the Exploratorium's exhibit collection and was the forerunner of the Exploratorium Cookbook, a manual explaining how to build these basic science exhibits.
Convinced of the need for public museums to supplement science curricula at all levels, he toured Europe and studied museums on a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1965. Three European museums, encountered during that year, served as important influences on the founding of the Exploratorium: the Palais de la Découverte, which displayed models to teach scientific concepts and employed students as demonstrators, a practice that directly inspired the Exploratorium's much-lauded High School Explainer Program; the South Kensington Museum of Science and Art, which Oppenheimer and his wife visited frequently; and the Deutsches Museum in Munich, the world's largest science museum, which had a number of interactive displays that impressed the Oppenheimers.
Back in the United States, Oppenheimer was invited to do the initial planning for a new branch of the Smithsonian, but he eventually turned it down to work instead on what he called his "San Francisco project". In 1967, the Oppenheimers moved to San Francisco with a view towards opening an independent museum of their own. Oppenheimer sought funding and support for the endeavor using a grassroots approach, bringing a written proposal and some handmade exhibits with him as he visited scientists, businesses, city and school officials, relatives, and friends. Many prominent scientists and cultural figures endorsed the project, and the offers of support, in conjunction with a $50,000 grant from the San Francisco Foundation, made the museum realizable.
Palace of Fine Arts
In late August 1969, the Exploratorium opened with little fanfare at the Palace of Fine Arts. Oppenheimer "simply opened the doors". Although the building needed many improvements, Oppenheimer couldn't afford to make the changes, and decided to allow the public to come and watch exhibits being built and changes being made as part of the participatory ethos of the institution. An early proposal would have erected a wall between the workshop where exhibits were being developed and the main visitor areas. Instead, Oppenheimer insisted that the workshop be placed without a wall, right next to the main entrance so that visitors could experience "the way a shop smells when you burn the wood in a saw, or smell the oil from a lathe". Above the workshop was a sign made by Barbara Perkins Gamow, who was the wife of George Gamow, a physicist, educator, and friend of Oppenheimer who had died just a year before the opening of the Exploratorium. "Here Is Being Created the Exploratorium a Community Museum Dedicated to Awareness" the inscription said. (Today, a copy of this motto is inscribed above the main entrance to the new Exploratorium at Pier 15.)
Oppenheimer served as the museum’s director until his death in 1985. Dr. Robert L. White served as director from 1987 to 1990. Dr. Goéry Delacôte served as executive director from 1991 until 2005. Dr. Dennis Bartels served as executive director of the Exploratorium from 2006 to 2016. Chris Flink served as director from June 2016 through February 2022, when he was replaced by the former Chancellor of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) and PBS executive, Lindsay Bierman. The museum has expanded greatly since the 1980s, increasing outreach, expanding programs for educators, creating an expanded Web presence, and forming museum partnerships around the world.
Move to Piers 15 and 17 In April 2013, the Exploratorium relocated from the Palace of Fine Arts to Piers 15 and 17, located between the San Francisco Ferry Building and Pier 39 along the San Francisco Embarcadero. In 2004, the Piers location was identified by Goéry Delacôte and then-board chairman Van Kasper as a potential space for relocation. In 2005, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution exempting the museum’s lease of the piers from San Francisco’s competitive bidding process due to its unique nature as a cultural and educational institution. Groundbreaking for the project, which required substantial construction and renovation, occurred on October 19, 2010. The Exploratorium holds a 66-year lease on the piers with the Port of San Francisco. Exhibits are only viewable at the Pier 15 campus; Pier 17 houses some staff, with the option for future expansion.
Piers 15 and 17 are historic piers that were constructed in 1931 and 1912, respectively. In 1954, the area between the piers was infilled and paved over. This infill was removed as part of the construction phase, restoring the space between the piers to public plazas, a pedestrian bridge, and open water.
Expansion since In 2026, the Exploratorium announced plans to expand with a location in Seoul, South Korea.
Architecture and design
Renovation of Piers 15 and 17
The Exploratorium campus comprises of indoor and outdoor exhibit space and includes of freely accessible public space. The exhibits are housed in and around Pier 15, which extends over over the Bay.
The Exploratorium at Pier 15 was designed by architectural firm EHDD. The General Contractor was Nibbi Brothers, and the Glazing Contractor was AGA (Architectural Glass and Aluminum). The piers had been neglected for decades prior to the Exploratorium’s move, and extensive renovation and repair were required. Nearly two thirds of the pilings under Pier 15 were repaired, including almost every piling needed to provide structural integrity, and new pilings were sunk. The removal of the parking lot between the piers was done slowly over the two years of construction, and the debris from the removal was captured and recycled. Several pilings were left in the water between the piers, both for aesthetic reasons and to support future exhibits.
An effort was made in the construction of the new location to preserve the historic elements of Pier 15. The Bay Observatory was the only new structure added to the site. The east end of the pier was cleaned of lead paint, revealing historic lettering underneath; designers chose to preserve the lettering rather than paint it over. As a result, the traces of the shipping lines that originally frequented the pier can still be seen. Some of the preservation efforts presented challenges in design, however; historic windows created energy losses that had to be offset elsewhere, and the historic interior trusswork was mainly restored rather than removed, meaning that the upper-level staff offices had to be built around them.
Other challenges to the design of the facilities were presented by the museum’s sustainability initiatives. The use of natural light whenever possible challenged exhibit designers relying on carefully controlled light levels; this was solved by using curtains and glare-reducing paint colors. Other conflicts between construction and energy use included the glass in the observatory, which would have presented a problem in cooling the building on warm days. This was overcome by adding fritted glass to the windows in thin horizontal lines through the panes to decrease the transparency without affecting the views. The fritting also makes the reflective surfaces of the Bay Observatory safe for birds.
Pier 15 incorporated two seismic joints as part of its seismic retrofit, one separating the Bay Observatory from the Pier 15 shed and the other separating the entire pier from the land. This second joint ensures that the entire pier will move independently from the land mass in the event of an earthquake, significantly reducing the potential torsional stress. The café at the west end of the Exploratorium is named the Seismic Joint in honor of the joint that cuts through the area of the building where the café is situated.
The aesthetic of the project was defined as "industrial naval chic" in keeping with the pier’s history.
Restaurant
The design aesthetic for both the Seismic Joint and Seaglass Restaurant was created by designer Olle Lundberg and based on the exhibit Color of Water. The bar at Seaglass features a specially designed version of Exploratorium artist Shawn Lani’s exhibit Icy Bodies.
Sustainability The Exploratorium at Pier 15 has a net-zero energy goal as part of its overall sustainability efforts. Setting this net-zero goal means that, while in operation, the Exploratorium will produce more energy on-site than it will consume on an annual basis. The museum highlights its sustainability efforts in visible ways throughout the museum as part of a stated intention to lead by example.
The Exploratorium, in order to reach its net-zero energy goal, produces energy with a roof-mounted array of photovoltaics. There are 5,874 PV modules on the roof, totaling , with a projected year-1 yield of 1.3 MW-AC/square foot (13.9 MW-AC/m2), or a total year-1 yield of 2,113,715 kWh. Any surplus energy generated is intended to be fed back into the utility grid, as the projected annual energy use for the building totals at 1,275,936 kWh.
In addition to solar power, the museum makes use of an HVAC system that takes advantage of the relatively constant, moderate temperature of the bay water under the piers, which is , to heat and cool the building. The bay water is filtered and sterilized before it is brought into a cistern below the pier, where it is held for use. When needed, the bay water is moved to a titanium heat exchanger, of which the building has two, where it is either used to heat or cool water that is cycled through a system of thermally activated radiant slabs. There are of plastic tubing in the radiant heating system in the floor, creating 82 different heating and cooling zones with distinct control systems. After the bay water passes through the heat exchangers, it is returned to the San Francisco Bay as allowed by a permit issued by the California Regional Water Quality Control Board.