The Truhlsen-Marmor Museum of the Eye® is celebrating the Halloween season with a new tour and gallery guide, Ocular Oddities: Weird and Wild Stories in Ophthalmology. Come visit the museum in person during our four open days a week, or check out these strange-but-true stories in a new virtual tour on the museum app.

The Truhlsen-Marmor Museum of the Eye® is home to nearly 4,000 aids to vision including eyeglasses, contact lenses, goggles, monoculars, binoculars and telescopes. We are currently featuring this collection in our temporary exhibit, “Spectacular Spectacles”. This intricate collection will be on view for a finite period of time in the museum’s temporary exhibit space. Be sure to catch it in person when the museum opens its doors this summer.

Three years ago, the American Academy of Ophthalmology Foundation set off on an audacious goal to raise $12 million to build the first publicly accessible museum on the eye, vision and ophthalmic heritage in San Francisco. We are thrilled to announce that we have reached the finish line with the help of many generous donors.

We ring in the new year with one subject that I find fascinating. That is the history of quack medicine, which is aggressively promoted, fraudulent medical treatment. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was an avalanche of cure-alls along with advertisements to sell them. The Museum of the Eye™ has a collection of these items related to curing eye disease.

Our eyes are just the beginning of our complex visual system. The brain plays an important role in what we see, but it can sometimes be tricked into seeing things that aren’t there. Check out this experiment that helps illustrate our brain's involvement in our vision.