As with most museums, the majority of objects in our collection are not on view due to the space constraints of our galleries. Additionally, certain types of objects, such as textiles and photographs, may fade or deteriorate if exposed to light for too long, so their display time is limited. And sometimes our objects are on loan to other museums for exhibition, receiving treatment in our conservation lab, or are being studied in storage by our curators. We regularly rotate objects on view in our core galleries of California Art, History, and Natural Sciences and encourage you to visit these galleries often.
More than 300,000 objects from our collection are available to view online. If an object is currently on view in the museum, the location information will be displayed in its online record. You may also use filtering tools when searching the collection to find only objects on display or to narrow larger results to just those on display.