In my hotel room in San Francisco sat a small glowing Buddha. It was kitchy, I knew, but this was San Francisco, and while it might not have been great art, I kind of liked it.

I had come to this city to find art. The question was: What would I find in the next three days?

In this city art is not just in fine museums — it is everywhere. It is in the numerous street murals painted on sides of buildings and alleyways and in excellent examples of public art (the latest is the 15-ton "Three Heads Six Arms" by Chinese artist Zhang Huan). Another example is "Conversation of the Birds" in North Beach by Brian Goggin and Dorka Keehn.

I started out in Chinatown — itself a kind of cultural, natural artwork. Colored lanterns strung across the street signify this entry into an everyday beauty. Peeking in a doorway I spied an enormous paper lantern, filling most of the front room. Outside were baskets of paper parasols — pink, yellow, neon green. This immersion of color and gaiety awakened my senses, focused my eyes and heart, and prepared me for more intense days of beauty than I'd had since a trip to Paris.

The next morning my search for art began with a trip to the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. When I was there "The Birth of Impressionism" was on view with paintings on loan from the Musee d'Orsay in Paris while it is being renovated. The second half of the exhibit , "Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musee d'Orsay" is on display from now until Jan. 18, 2011.

This alone was worth a trip to the city. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said, "Each of these two shows brings together masterpieces that, once they return to the Musee d'Orsay, will most certainly never be let out again for exhibition all together."

The first part of the exhibit took visitors through the beginnings of Impressionism, starting with Adolphe-William Bouguereau's epitome of academic painting, "The Birth of Venus." The exhibit also included works by Manet, Cezanne and Monet. The exhibit on display now presents more than 100 Post-Impressionist paintings, including Vincent van Gogh's "Starry Night" and Paul Cezanne's "Bathers."

Art even surrounds visitors when they take a break for lunch. In the outdoor pavilion hanging reproductions of paintings by van Gogh and Renoir flutter across the clear roof. Outside are a giant safety pin by Claes Oldenberg and Coosje Van Bruggen, and as if they fallen on the grass, giant apples by Gustav Kraitz wait to surprise and please.

Just across the road is the California Academy of Sciences, designed by architect Renzo Piano. With the largest roof garden in the world, it is truly a work of green art. The Academy of Sciences also has two pieces of public art — both by renowned sculptor Maya Lin of Vietnam Memorial fame. Her works are on each side patio.

The very moving memorial titled "What Is Missing?" is a multimedia artwork dedicated to raising awareness about the current environmental crisis.

Mayor Gaven Newsom has said that Lin's sculptures show what is at stake and why reducing our environmental impact is one of our new urgent challenges.

From there I walked up to a "listening cone" lined with reclaimed redwood and heard the sound of the ocean. I also learned that even the sound of offshore drilling is harmful to whales and saw the video footage at the end of the cone that featured the monarch butterfly, golden toad and other creatures predicted to be extinct in our lifetime.

Lin's installation, "Where the Land Meets the Sea," is on a patio at the opposite end of the Academy. In this piece she has created the topography of the area between Angel Island and Golden Gate Bridge. The sculpture of 5/8-inch stainless-steel tubing is like a line drawing in space.

The next day it was time to visit "The Language of the Birds" and later "Three Heads, Six Arms" at the Civic Center. "The Language of the Birds" is on the corner of Broadway and Columbus. Visitors must look skyward in the daytime in order not to miss the books that fly like birds and then at the sidewalk to see all the words that seem to have fallen from them and which if arranged properly are a poem, "Bohemian Universe" by Genny Lim. Perhaps the best time to see this installation is at night, when it is lighted.

Not easy to miss is "Three Heads, Six Arms" in the plaza of City Hall. Chinese artist Zhang Huan, known worldwide as a performance artist, saw relics in Tibet of Buddhas desecrated and destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. He wanted to draw attention to this loss in his art and to somehow alleviate the pain caused by their destruction.

I had only one more morning in the city. There was no time for the Legion of Honor exhibit, "Impressionist Paris: City of Light," which will run through Jan. 26, 2011. I chose instead to visit the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary. "Seventy-five Years of Looking Forward," which runs until Jan. 16, features works that tell the story of the artists, collectors and cultural visionaries who founded the museum. This museum broke new ground by exhibiting and purchasing works by artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Mark Rothko when these artists were still on the cutting edge. The first solo exhibit of Jackson Pollock's work was mounted here in 1945.

Forward-thinking, risk-taking, an eye for beauty — even the orange color of the Golden Gate says a lot about San Francisco and its flair for the visual, as did a family I saw — mother, father and baby — all with purple hair.

Back in my room, the little Buddha was as cheery as when I had left him, and I decided that he was art, too. I even looked out at the Oakland Bay Bridge with new eyes. John Cage has said that music is everywhere, and Marcel Duchamp demonstrated that art, too, is all around. What more perfect place to find it in museums and on street corners than San Francisco?

IF YOU GO

For more information: www.deyoung.famsf.org, www.sfmoma.org, www.sfartscommission.org

Karen Kenyon is a freelance travel writer.