Hand Fan Museum of Healdsburg

About Hand Fan Museum of Healdsburg

The Hand Fan Museum of Healdsburg is the first museum in the United States dedicated solely to hand fans. Visitors explore rotating exhibitions and a permanent collection of hand fans from around the world, examining how these objects reveal the art, culture, geography and history of the societies that created and used them. The current exhibition, Fanimals, celebrates creatures both real and imagined depicted on fan surfaces, from crickets and rats to storks and butterflies, showing how animals have inspired artists across different cultural traditions and periods as subjects of beauty, storytelling, humor and symbolic meaning. Hand fans themselves have served many purposes throughout history, including fashion, religion, battle and ceremony, and cultures have even developed a language devoted exclusively to fans. The museum's small intimate space in Healdsburg, California provides educational and cultural enrichment through its collections, publications and lectures that tell the stories of the cultures and individuals who used these remarkable objects.