Ken Kesey’s Original Furthur Bus Is on Display in Golden Gate Park Through October 25

The bus that carried Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters across the country in 1964 is parked in Golden Gate Park. Furthur, a hand-painted 1939 International Harvester school bus, anchors Forever Grateful, Golden Gate Park, an exhibition from the Haight Street Art Center that opened Saturday, September 5 at the San Francisco County Fair Building and runs through October 25.

The bus

Furthur had not left the Kesey family farm in Oregon since 1969, when the Pranksters drove it to the Woodstock festival. The Haight Street Art Center says in its announcement that this is the bus’s first public exhibition, and that it is on loan from Zane and Stephanie Kesey. For decades the public saw it only in photographs while the bus itself sat in storage.

“When people ask what my best work is, it’s the bus,” Kesey told The Spokesman-Review in 2000, in a quote the art center reprints. “Those books made it possible for the bus to become.”

After the exhibition closes, Furthur goes into the first phase of a restoration run by the Furthur Down the Road Foundation, an Oregon nonprofit founded by Stephanie Kesey, Ken Kesey’s daughter-in-law, to return the bus to its 1960s condition. Haight Street Art Center board chair Roger McNamee is working with the foundation on a multi-phase plan. The art center says the Kesey family had turned down earlier interest from the Smithsonian Institution and others.

What else is in the building

Jerry Garcia’s BMW is on public display for the first time alongside the bus. The rest of the exhibition is built as a walk-through: an analog liquid light show by Lance Gordon of Mad Alchemy, a display from the Wavy Gravy collection, an ofrenda, a listening wall and a “psychedelic communication network” for recording and hearing visitors’ own stories, a makers space, and live performers staged by the theater company Third Rail Projects. Brian Scharf of Brave Design handled the overall experience design.

“The exhibition brings visitors to where so much of the Grateful Dead’s history actually happened,” Kelly Harris, the art center’s executive director, said in the announcement.

Opening weekend ran through Labor Day and finished with a free Grahame Lesh and Friends set on Monday, September 7 in Robin Williams Meadow, next to the exhibition building. That is the same meadow that hosts Comedy Day on September 20.

The first half of the show, on Haight Street

This is the second of two Forever Grateful exhibitions. The first opened July 3 at the Haight Street Art Center, 215 Haight Street, and runs through September 20. It holds more than 400 works covering the band from 1965 to 1995, including paintings, original lithographs, pen and ink drawings, photographs, vinyl records, instruments and ephemera. The gallery is open Thursday through Sunday, 12pm to 6pm.

The two shows are structured differently. The Haight Street exhibition is an archive to move through at your own pace. The Golden Gate Park one is choreographed, with performers and timed entry.

Visiting

Where: San Francisco County Fair Building, also known as the Hall of Flowers, 1199 9th Avenue, Golden Gate Park.

When: Through Saturday, October 25, 2026.

Tickets: Timed entry, sold through Eventbrite. Visitors under 18 are admitted with a parent or legal guardian. The art center says refunds are available up to five days ahead.

Getting there: The 44 O’Shaughnessy runs along 9th Avenue past the building. The N Judah stops at 9th Avenue and Judah Street, about three blocks south. Check the SFMTA route page before you go.

For the rest of what is on this month, see our September 2026 guide.

Photo courtesy of Zane and Stephanie Kesey, via Haight Street Art Center.