The Asian Art Museum Opens Garuda in Bali on September 18

The Asian Art Museum opens “Garuda in Bali” on Friday, September 18, 2026, in the Hambrecht Contemporary Gallery. The show runs through January 4, 2027, and the museum’s exhibition page lists it as included with general admission, so there is no separate ticket.

What’s in the show

The exhibition follows Garuda, the part-bird, part-man figure of Hindu tradition who serves as the mount of the god Vishnu and who became the national symbol of Indonesia. The museum describes the arc as running from Garuda’s birth from an egg through his decision to carry Vishnu, with the story told through wooden sculptures and traditional paintings made in Bali in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The image the museum is using to promote the show is a detail from a North Bali painting of Vishnu riding Garuda, dated approximately 1840 to 1940, in colors and gold on wood. It came into the collection through the museum’s Connoisseurs’ Council and the estate of K. Hart Smith.

“Garuda in Bali” is organized by the Asian Art Museum itself rather than borrowed from another institution, with support from the Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang Endowment Fund for Exhibitions and the Kao/Williams Contemporary Art Exhibitions Fund.

Where it fits in the museum’s fall

September is a turnover month at 200 Larkin Street. Two installations close on September 7: FX Harsono’s video work “Writing in the Rain” and Lala Rukh’s sound piece “Subh-e-Umeed” in Samsung Hall. “Garuda in Bali” opens on September 18, and a week later, on September 25, the museum opens Ha Chong-Hyun: Retrospective, the Korean painter’s first museum show in North America. “Vishnu’s Cosmic Ocean” follows on October 23.

Visiting

Where: Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin Street, Civic Center. Hours: Thursday 1 to 8 p.m., Friday through Monday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed Tuesday and Wednesday. Cost: General admission is $20 for adults, $17 for ages 65 and up, $14 for ages 13 to 17 and college students with ID, and free for children 12 and under. “Garuda in Bali” is included at that price, with no special-exhibition surcharge. On the first Sunday of each month, general admission is free.

Getting there: The museum’s visitor page puts the entrance one block from the Civic Center/UN Plaza BART station: take the UN Plaza exit, cross Hyde Street onto Fulton, walk one block, then turn right on Larkin. The Civic Center Garage at 355 McAllister Street and the UC Law garage at 376 Larkin Street are both within a block.

For the other free admission dates around the city, see our roundup of free museum days in San Francisco for September 2026.

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