Legion of Honor’s Etruscans Exhibition Closes September 20: The Last Weeks

The Legion of Honor is showing The Etruscans: From the Heart of Ancient Italy, an exhibition of more than 150 objects from the civilization that preceded and shaped ancient Rome. The run ends September 20, 2026, so there are about two and a half weeks left.

The Etruscans lived in central Italy, across what is now Tuscany, Umbria, and northern Lazio, from roughly the 9th to the 1st century BCE. The exhibition gathers bronze and terracotta vessels, sculpture, and gold jewelry that trace their art, religion, and daily life.

What’s in the show

One centerpiece is the Liver of Piacenza, a bronze model of a sheep’s liver marked with the names of Etruscan deities. Priests known as haruspices used such models to read omens from the organs of sacrificed animals. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco say the object is on display outside its region of discovery for the first time. The show also includes funerary sculpture, household vessels, and jewelry drawn from Italian collections.

Why the Etruscans matter

Much of what later became Roman, from city planning to religious ritual, drew on Etruscan practice. Because most surviving Etruscan writing is short and funerary, the language is only partly understood, and objects like these carry much of what is known about the culture.

Planning a visit before it closes

September 20 is a Sunday, so the last day is a weekend day and the closing weekend will be busier than a weekday. The Legion of Honor is closed Mondays.

The Legion of Honor’s first-Tuesday free admission day fell on September 1, and the next one is October 6, after this show closes. That means no first-Tuesday free general-admission day is left during the run. Special-exhibition surcharges are set separately by the museum, so check before you go. The rest of the free-day calendar for this month is in our guide to free museum days in San Francisco in September 2026.

From September 5, a second show runs alongside it in Gallery 22: Eternal Paris: Photographing the City of Light, nearly 50 photographs of Paris that are included with general admission. Between September 5 and September 20 both are on in the same building, which is the only two-week window when one ticket covers both.

If you go

The Legion of Honor sits in Lincoln Park in the Richmond District, at 100 34th Avenue. The 18 Muni bus serves Lincoln Park near the museum entrance. After September 20 the show travels to the San Antonio Museum of Art, on view there from October 31, 2026 through March 14, 2027.

For everything else on this month, see our September 2026 guide.

Exhibition dates and object details are from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The exhibition was also reviewed by KQED.

Photo: Fastily, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.