For the first time in decades, Ken Kesey’s original psychedelic school bus has returned to the city where it all began. Jerry Garcia’s BMW is beside it. Forever Grateful, Golden Gate Park is open now.
The Grateful Dead Live · San Francisco
The Furthur Bus
Is Back in San Francisco.
For the first time in decades, Ken Kesey’s original psychedelic school bus has returned to the city where it all began. Jerry Garcia’s BMW is beside it. Forever Grateful, Golden Gate Park is open now.
A Two-Part Homecoming
Forever Grateful: The Full Arc
This is the second and culminating chapter of a two-part tribute to the Grateful Dead’s enduring legacy. Together, both exhibitions walk you through six decades of music, art, and counterculture in the place it all actually happened.
Forever Grateful · Haight Street Art Center
Open through September 20, 2026 · Free Admission
More than 400 original works including paintings, lithographs, photographs, instruments, vinyl records, and rare ephemera, chronicling the band’s journey from 1965 to 1995. Where this exhibition invites contemplation, the Golden Gate Park chapter invites participation.
Forever Grateful · Golden Gate Park
September 5 through October 25, 2026 · Paid Admission
The San Francisco County Fair Building, Hall of Flowers, 1199 9th Avenue. A choreographed performance and conversation built around curated works of historic art and two iconic artifacts, staged in a park that was itself a stage for the band’s own history.
Never Before Publicly Displayed
The Two Artifacts That Change Everything
Two objects at the center of the Golden Gate Park exhibition have never been seen by the public until now. Either one alone would be worth the trip.
The Furthur Bus
Ken Kesey & the Merry Pranksters · 1964 · Fully Restored
The original 1964 psychedelic school bus driven by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters across America in the summer of 1964, painted in the Day-Glo colors that became one of the most recognizable images of the counterculture era, has returned to San Francisco for the first time in decades. The bus is not a replica. It is not a recreation. It is the actual Furthur, fully restored, physically present in the Hall of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. Standing beside it is the closest most people will ever come to the specific moment in American cultural history it represents.
Jerry Garcia’s BMW
Personal Vehicle · Kept in Private Storage · World Premiere
Garcia’s personal BMW has been kept in private storage since his passing in 1995, unseen by anyone outside the family’s inner circle. The Golden Gate Park exhibition marks its first public display anywhere. The car sits alongside the Furthur bus as a pairing of two objects that anchor opposite ends of the counterculture story, Kesey’s communal road trip machine and Garcia’s personal vehicle, together in the same room for the first time ever.
What Visitors Encounter Inside
The Exhibition as Experience
This is not a passive archive. It is a choreographed environment designed to put visitors inside the history rather than in front of it.
Third Rail Projects · Live Performance
One of the world’s foremost creators of site-specific and experiential performance, working with an ensemble of local dance and theater artists to create unexpected pockets of psychedelic, performance-driven experience throughout the space on a rolling basis.
Mad Alchemy Liquid Light Show
Lance Gordon’s analog liquid light projections, the same art form that transformed Dead concerts in the 1960s into full sensory experiences, are running live inside the exhibition. This is not video. This is the original medium.
Large-Scale Projections & Installation Art
Brian Scharf of Portland-based Brave Design contributed installation work alongside a team of local artists. The space alternates between the historic, the communal, and the deeply personal across multiple registers simultaneously.
Puppetry, Performers & Storytelling
Unexpected visual surprises including puppetry and performers that recall the wonder of an actual Grateful Dead show. Community storytelling installations where visitors can share, listen, and leave their own mark on the exhibition.
Historic Objects & Ephemera
Original, intricately decorated fan ticket-request envelopes sent in over the decades. Historic instruments. Photographs and artwork. The physical record of a thirty-year relationship between a band and its audience.
The Wall of Sound Replica
The scaled Wall of Sound that visitors can walk through, playing multi-track live master tapes. Standing inside it gives you a physical sense of what the 1974 PA system was actually trying to do to an audience.
“The way in which the Haight Street Art Center ties the history of counterculture to today is really evidenced in this exhibition. Artists like us are contributing pieces that offer embodied and experiential ways to engage with these ideas and celebrate the past, while imagining what the countercultures of the future could look like.”
Zach Morris · Artistic Director · Third Rail Projects“Our second Forever Grateful exhibition carries that mission to Golden Gate Park, one of San Francisco’s most iconic public spaces, and a homecoming for this story. The exhibition brings visitors to where so much of the Grateful Dead’s history actually happened.”
Kelly Harris · Executive Director · Haight Street Art CenterFree Concert · Labor Day · September 7
Grahame Lesh & Friends · Robin Williams Meadow
The opening weekend runs through Labor Day with a free concert on September 7 in the meadow adjacent to the exhibition space. Free music in Golden Gate Park. Just like his father’s generation did it.
Grahame Lesh has been explicit about what this free park concert represents: a direct callback to the free outdoor shows his father Phil Lesh and the Grateful Dead pioneered in San Francisco in the 1960s, a tradition Grahame witnessed and participated in as a member of Phil Lesh and Friends in the 2020s. Music for everyone, in the park, on a Monday, the way it was always meant to be.
The Band
“There’s nothing like free music in San Francisco. Music is for everyone, and I am honored to celebrate the band’s legacy and history in San Francisco, in Golden Gate Park, with all of you.”
Grahame LeshThe Next Generation · Grahame Lesh
Terrapin Roadshow · Active Now
The Music Keeps Moving
Following Phil Lesh and Bob Weir, the future of the catalog belongs to the community.
Grahame Lesh has officially launched the Terrapin Roadshow as the living continuation of the spirit his father built at Terrapin Crossroads before its closure. Rather than a single centralized touring band, the Roadshow functions as a traveling network of rotating jam musicians, bringing the original Terrapin community ethos to venues across the country. The Deadhead community does not have one heir. It has many, distributed across regional scenes and national touring acts, all carrying pieces of the same tradition forward in their own ways. The Terrapin Roadshow is Grahame’s contribution to that distributed inheritance, and the free concert at Robin Williams Meadow on September 7 is its most public expression yet.
Local · New Jersey · September 2026
In Your Backyard: NJ Tribute Shows
Can’t make it to San Francisco? The music is coming to New Jersey this month in two very different formats, both worth your evening.
Lovelight at Cooper’s Riverview
Thursday, September 10, 2026 · 7:00 PM
Cooper’s Riverview · 50 Riverview Plaza · Trenton, NJ
An energetic, fully improvisational Dead tribute right on the water in Trenton. Lovelight brings two full sets of genuine jam energy rather than a set list recreation. A summer Thursday night on the waterfront with this music is hard to beat.
Grateful Dead Jam at Killarney’s Publick House
Sunday, September 20, 2026 · 4:00 PM
Killarney’s Publick House · 1644 Whitehorse Mercerville Rd · Hamilton Township, NJ
A casual, family-friendly afternoon jam featuring Ty Mares from the Cosmic Jerry Band alongside members of Big Trip and Crickets and Cicadas. A Sunday afternoon open-format session in Hamilton Township is the low-key, community-driven version of everything the Dead always believed live music should be.
“At Haight Street Art Center, we believe art has the power to preserve history and inspire connections across generations. Our Forever Grateful exhibitions bring visitors to where so much of the Grateful Dead’s history actually happened.”
Kelly Harris · Executive Director · Haight Street Art Center
