California Historical Society

California Historical Society Review

If you're not a history buff, the CHS might seem like an obvious skip—who wants to look at fading old photographs and musty artifacts?—but these airy galleries are worth a stop. The shows here draw from the society's vast repository of Californiana—hundreds of thousands of photographs, publications, paintings, and gold-rush paraphernalia. Special exhibits have included A Wild Flight of the Imagination: The Story of the Golden Gate Bridge and Hobos to Street People: Artists' Responses to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present. From out front, take a look across the street: this is the best view of the Museum of the African Diaspora's three-story photo mosaic.