Best way to "negate" an instanceof

No, there is no better way; yours is canonical.

I don't know what you imagine when you say "beautiful", but what about this? I personally think it's worse than the classic form you posted, but somebody might like it...

if (str instanceof String == false) { /* ... */ }

You could use the Class.isInstance method:

if(!String.class.isInstance(str)) { /* do Something */ }

... but it is still negated and pretty ugly.

Usually you don't want just an if but an else clause as well.

if(!(str instanceof String)) { /* do Something */ } 
else { /* do something else */ }

can be written as

if(str instanceof String) { /* do Something else */ } 
else { /* do something */ }

Or you can write the code so you don't need to know if its a String or not. e.g.

if(!(str instanceof String)) { str = str.toString(); } 

can be written as

str = str.toString();