Vacaville Museum Foundation

Our Mission

To explore history, connect community, and cultivate a future inspired by arts & culture. 

Our Vision

We envision a Solano County destination that champions curiosity, learning, and innovation through community-rooted museum spaces. 

The Museum

The Vacaville Museum is the only cultural institution dedicated to providing arts, history, and culture education to the entirety of Solano County's 906 square miles. Across seven unique cities, unincorporated agricultural lands, and the Travis Air Force Base military community, we serve as the central cultural anchor for 456,000 residents. We are incredibly honored to be recognized as Visit Vacaville's Local Attraction of the Year which reflects our role as a steward of the region's creative and historical identity. 

What began in 1981 as a grassroots effort to protect a disappearing agricultural legacy has grown into a dynamic space stewarding over 30,000 objects and archival materials. Our collection is as diverse as the county itself, holding everything from 1850s industrial tools and historic Nut Tree artifacts to vital oral histories and deeply moving collections from Japanese-American families pre- and post-WWII. 

Why Your Support Matters: Keeping Culture Accessible to All

We believe that arts, history, and culture access belong to everyone. Our institutional commitment to transparency and accountability means that the Vacaville Museum has provided 100% FREE museum admission to every single visitor for more than 40 years. Through our active participation in the Museums for All initiative, we make our mission accessible to all, guaranteeing that every family in our region can enjoy cultural spaces, unburdened by financial barriers. When you invest in the Vacaville Museum on this 24-hour giving day, you are directly funding the programs that make us Solano County's center for arts, history, and culture:

1. 'History Detectives' Fieldtrips

When local K-12 field trips arrive at our doors, 50% to 75% of the students confess they have never stepped foot inside a museum before. We provide their very first gateway to a lifelong love of learning and cultural appreciation. Our innovative History Detectives program places real, touchable historical artifacts right into students' hands to build critical thinking through inquiry-based learning. Your support helps us expand this program to serve the 60,000 K-12 students across our county. 

2. Main & Community Galleries

We co-curate our spaces with our community, ensuring that our exhibits interpret meaningful, deeply relevant regional stories. Our current Main Gallery exhibition, Sole Italiano: Una Nuova Storia, traces the resilience, deep traditions, and lasting cultural legacy of Italian American communities in Solano County by co-curating family history narratives passed down through generations.

Concurrently, our modular Community Gallery acts as an adaptive, responsive space for storytelling that supports local artists and collaborative creative projects. This year, the space has showcased historical perspectives from artist J.S. Hartley and featured an incredible collaboration between California State Prison-Solano and Fresno Skateboard Salvage where incarcerated men designed custom skateboard decks. Family members traveled from as far as Reno and Los Angeles to see their loved ones' creativity and humanity honored openly on our gallery walls. The inaugural exhibit was Crowned: Ancestral Forms and artist Carla Lawson’s first solo show. It explored the vibrant tapestry that is African and African American culture, drawing inspiration from the boundless reservoir of Carla’s heritage.

3. Free & Low-Cost Public Programs

Our popular, completely free Summer Block Party series and highly anticipated annual Children’s Party provide an integral space for our community and families to connect. These programs bring artmaking and community-building directly to families who may be traditionally priced out of arts and culture experiences.

How Your Donation Makes an Impact

On this 24-hour giving day, every dollar counts! Thanks to Live Solano Give Solano, a gift as small as $10 can make a massive difference in keeping our doors open and our programs free. 

• $25 helps provide art-making supplies for a family at our free community events.
• $50 helps funds a History Detectives hands-on artifact visit for local classrooms.
• $100 helps sponsor a local collective, artist, or student group exhibiting in our new Community Gallery.

Double Your Impact Today: Support the Vacaville Museum as a cause close to your heart and consider sharing this donation page with a friend or creating a personal peer-to-peer fundraising page right here on our profile to double your impact! 

Thank you for helping us explore history, connect community, and cultivate a future inspired by arts & culture!