Museum of Performance + Design

The Museum of Performance + Design occupies an unusual curatorial position: it treats performance and material culture not as separate domains but as interlocking practices. The collection emphasizes objects made for or shaped by human gesture—costumes, set pieces, props, textiles, and decorative arts that have functioned within theatrical, dance, and performance contexts. This orientation means the museum rewards viewers willing to read objects as traces of embodied practice rather than as autonomous aesthetic statements. A dress becomes legible through the body that moved within it; a chair matters partly for how it was occupied. The institution's seventy-year history reflects San Francisco's particular relationship to experimental theater and dance, and its holdings reflect those networks and archives. The building itself—scaled for intimate looking rather than encyclopedic sweep—encourages sustained attention to detail: the way a seam was finished, how dye was applied, the patina of handling. The museum does not position itself as comprehensive but rather as a site of specificity, where the decorative arts are understood as languages of movement, transformation, and time.

Signature collections

The museum's holdings center on twentieth-century performance materials: costumes and textiles from experimental theater and modern dance, design sketches and models, and decorative arts selected for their relationship to gesture and use. While the collection is not primarily figurative painting or sculpture, works on paper and costume design drawings constitute a significant register—forms that capture the human figure in motion and abstraction simultaneously. The collection also includes functional decorative arts chosen for their presence within performance spaces and domestic interiors shaped by artistic practice. Holdings span from early modernist theater design through contemporary work, with particular depth in Bay Area performance traditions and the material culture of avant-garde dance. The museum's approach emphasizes the hand and the object, favoring works that bear visible evidence of craft and repeated use.