“Pay What You Can” Wednesday at SF’s Museum of Craft and Design

There’s no better time to visit the Museum of Craft and Design than on their Free First Thursdays.

Committed to making art, craft, and design accessible to everyone the Museum of Craft and Design is Free on the First Thursday of every month. . 

Museum of Craft and Design’s Free First Thursdays
Every First Thursday | 10am to 5pm
Museum of Craft and Design
2569 Third Street (between 22nd and 23rd), San Francisco
Free Admission

The MCD is closed on New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Day, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, July 4-5, Labor Day, Indigenous People’s Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day.

2025 Free First Thursday Dates*

• June 5, 2025
• July 3, 2025
• August 7, 2025
• September 4, 2025
• *October 2, 2025 – Closed for exhibition installation
• November 6, 2025
• December 4, 2025

*Please note that in addition to major holidays, the museum may be closed for exhibition changeovers so please check their schedule before attending.

Special Exhibitions for 2025

Beau McCall: Buttons On!
May 10 – September 14, 2025

Buttons On! marks the first-ever retrospective for artist, Beau McCall. Proclaimed by American Craft magazine as “The Button Man,” McCall creates wearable and visual art by hand-sewing clothing buttons onto mostly upcycled fabrics, materials, and objects. Buttons On! showcases pieces from McCall’s nearly forty-year career, the debut of several new works, and select archival material.

Visitors will experience McCall’s button-embellished plethora of wearable art including jackets, vests, yokes, shorts, aprons, sneakers, jewelry, and durags; visual art such as a 450-pound cast iron bathtub, a life-size Kool-Aid Man, and an installation of over 100 jars of buttons; mostly never-before-seen archival materials documenting McCall’s career and evolution; and a few select items of McCall’s button-less works that spotlight his versatility and boundless creativity.

A Roadmap to Stardust
May 10 – September 14, 2025

Drawing on antiquarian images of the heavens, origin stories, and myths of early civilizations, A Roadmap to Stardust is a modern inquiry into the cosmos and humankind’s eagerness to explore distant planets. Astronomy, the most ancient of the natural sciences, is entwined with the religious, mythological, cosmological, and astrological beliefs of prehistory. While humans have looked to the stars for millennia, future stargazing may take on a more urgent tone as an escape from Earth’s changing climate.

General Admission Prices

Museum members: Free
General admission: $10.00
Students with ID: $8.00
Seniors (65 and older): $8.00
Children (through age 12): Free

North American Reciprocal Museum (NARM) member and a Blue Star Museum. *MCD offers free admission to our nation’s active-duty military personnel (including National Guard), veterans, first responders, and their families. As part of the SF Museums for All program, visitors who are part of Medi-Cal or Cal Fresh programs can get 4 free admission passes each visit.