Performing arts are inherently temporary. A play closes. A dance ends. A concert fades into silence. The Museum of Performance + Design exists to preserve what remains after the curtain falls: programs, photographs, posters, costumes, set models, and the papers of performers, designers, and companies. The collection documents San Francisco's performing arts scene from the Gold Rush era through the present, covering the San Francisco Opera, the San Francisco Ballet, the American Conservatory Theater, and dozens of smaller companies and independent artists.

The institution began as the San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum, focused on archival preservation and research access. It evolved into the Museum of Performance + Design, broadening its mission to include exhibitions and public programs that make the archives accessible to wider audiences. The museum's move to the Bayview District placed it in a neighborhood that is itself undergoing transformation, connecting the performing arts to a community that has historically had less access to cultural institutions.

San Francisco has one of the richest performing arts traditions in the western United States. The city's opera, ballet, symphony, and theater companies have shaped American culture for over a century. Without archives, that history exists only in aging memories and yellowing newspaper clippings. The Museum of Performance + Design ensures that future researchers, artists, and audiences can access the material record of what happened on San Francisco's stages. It is a museum of things that were designed to disappear, and it refuses to let them.