Regional Museums: Eclectic Collections

Smaller arts organisations flourish throughout the state. Many stand out as monuments to distinctive California traditions.

    • It’s a testament to the significance of surfing in California that you can cruise collections of vintage boards at not one but three fine coastal surf museums: the California Surf Museum in Oceanside, the International Surfing Museum in Huntington Beach, and the Santa Cruz Surfing Museum.
    • Get a hands-on education at San Jose’s Tech Museum of Innovation, which showcases the fruits of Silicon Valley’s boundless scientific inventiveness.
    • The Charles M. Schulz Museum—located near the Santa Rosa studio where the prolific Peanuts cartoonist worked for 30 years—contains more than 6,000 of his gently wry original strips.