The 20 best art museums in AmericaThe Post’s art critics rank their favorite museums across the country, based on their collections, exhibitions and history of public engagement.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/art/2024/10/24/20-best-art-museums-in-america/
Some art museums overawe with the sweep of their collections. Others thrill with a few perfectly placed masterworks.
The best of them embody their cities’ ambitions and fulfill an ideal: that anyone can walk in for a moment of rest and leave with a brain buzzing or a soul stirred.
For our annual Museums Issue, The Washington Post’s critics highlight the country’s wealth of art museums, from its neoclassical temples to its modern jewels (and those that offer both). Below, we rank our favorites, based, for starters, on the depth and breadth of the museums’ collections, the quality of their exhibitions, and their history of public engagement. So many others could have made the list, among them gems in Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Toledo, Kansas City, and too many in New York and D.C. to mention.
Below, we rank the heavyweights, but don’t miss our picks for the best smaller art museums and the best college museums, too. Make your own list, plan a day trip and take a companion — plus an open mind.
20. Dallas Museum of Art
Situated in an arts precinct in downtown Dallas that also includes the neighboring Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas’s bellwether art museum occupies an unusual building that’s not always sympathetic and is occasionally disorienting. But its collection is deep and diverse. Highlights include important works by Mondrian, Monet, Renoir and Morisot. Its exhibitions are both popular and scholarly. In other words, it generally meets the challenge implied in early director John Ankeney’s rousing statement: “Nature made Dallas rich, Time will make her powerful, but only Art can make her great.” — Sebastian Smee
19. Whitney Museum of American Art
Not everyone celebrated the 2015 relocation of the Whitney Museum of American Art from a beloved mid-century home by architect Marcel Breuer on the Upper East Side of Manhattan to a new, bristling modernist one designed by Renzo Piano. But now the museum lives on the dynamic edge of the meatpacking district, the West Village and Chelsea and is connected to the wildly popular High Line park. The Whitney Biennial, with roots dating back to 1932, is a must-see failure, a futile but noble effort every two years to make sense of the sprawling, amorphous and wildly diverse contemporary art world. And the Whitney’s permanent collection of more than 25,000 works checks all the boxes of American art since the late 19th century. — Philip Kennicott
18. Wadsworth Atheneum
The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, is open to the public only four days a week, from noon until 5 p.m. — presumably because of financial constraints. It’s a shame, because the Wadsworth, having opened in 1844, claims to be the oldest continually operating art museum in the United States and completed a major renovation as recently as 2015. It has a splendid collection — not at all dusty (its long-running Matrix program for contemporary art has helped keep it current). Its baroque, surrealist and Hudson River School holdings are tremendous. It boasts the Serge Lifar collection of Ballets Russes drawings and costumes, the Samuel Colt firearms collection, a terrific “Wunderkammer” display, great costumes and textiles, and destination paintings by, among others, William Holman Hunt, Caravaggio, Joseph Wright of Derby and Norman Rockwell. — Smee
17. Crystal Bridges
There was deep skepticism when the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened in Bentonville, Arkansas, in 2011. A spending spree, including a glamorous bespoke building by architect Moshe Safdie and the acquisition of major works by key American artists, was funded by the museum’s founder, Walmart heiress Alice Walton. The Walmart connection, the Midwestern location and the assumption that the museum would be more celebratory than critical raised doubts. But the museum is thoroughly professional, innovative, open-minded and adventurous. It hosted the 2018 American debut of a major exhibition of Black Power artists and has been as keenly attentive to contemporary art and culture issues as it is to the longer arc of American art. — Kennicott
16. Baltimore Museum of Art
There’s more to the Baltimore Museum of Art than the legendary Cone collection, the massive trove of modern art acquired by the Cone sisters in the early decades of the 20th century. But that collection alone, with major works by Picasso, Matisse, Degas, Renoir, Gauguin and Van Gogh, would put the museum on the international map. Located on the campus of Johns Hopkins University, the museum has made valiant and sometimes controversial efforts — including the sale of major works to acquire more contemporary ones — to keep its focus on the living and evolving contemporary art world. A 2022 exhibition, “Guarding the Art,” gave the museum’s guards the opportunity to curate their own view of its phenomenal collection, a daring decision to empower museum workers who are not the usual elite gatekeepers. — Kennicott
15. Legion of Honor/De Young
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco put two very different faces to the world. The Legion of Honor is a neoclassical temple with a significant collection of Western art, including major works from the Renaissance to the postimpressionists. The De Young, a low-slung, copper-clad pavilion with a torquing tower, designed by the blue-chip firm Herzog & de Meuron, is a trophy building in the city’s beloved Golden Gate Park. The De Young maintains the most ambitious exhibition schedule, and a solid commitment to contemporary art and art from outside the Western tradition. Taken together, you have a compelling archive and a window on the world, and both are a delight to visit. — Kennicott
14. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The first West Coast museum devoted exclusively to modern and contemporary art, SFMOMA is a linchpin of San Francisco’s cultural life. It’s where you go to see works by Diebenkorn, Asawa, Kahlo, Rivera, Matisse, Rauschenberg, Thiebaud and Hopper. Its distinctive Mario Botta-designed building was extended in 2016 by an equally striking expansion by Snohetta architects. The collection is particularly strong in photography. It was dramatically enhanced by the 100-year loan of the Doris and Donald Fisher collection. That deal has been controversial (there are unusual conditions attached). But the Fishers (Donald founded the Gap clothing company) collected artists like Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol, Agnes Martin and Cy Twombly in depth, affording visitors the rare opportunity to spend time in galleries devoted exclusively to individual artists. — Smee
13. Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Not surprisingly, the largest museum on the nation’s left coast is both comprehensive in its overview of Western art and keenly alert to the art of Central and South America and the Pacific Rim. With some 150,000 objects surveying 6,000 years of human history, its collection has been as influential on the artists of Los Angeles as those of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art have been on the work of artists in New York. A relative newcomer, LACMA was founded as an independent art museum in 1961 and grew rapidly, expanding into a campus of buildings on Wilshire Boulevard. Much of the museum has been closed for years as a new main building, designed by Peter Zumthor, is being constructed, which is causing considerable anxiety among fans of the old institution. The world awaits, nervously, for the new building and reorganized collection opening in 2026. — Kennicott
12. St. Louis Art Museum
Situated in a huge gorgeous park just west of the Mississippi, St. Louis’s leading art museum is well-known for its deep holdings of the German painter Max Beckmann, of postwar German art (including by Gerhard Richter and Anselm Kiefer) and its masterpieces by Henri Matisse, Hans Holbein, Titian and Artemisia Gentileschi. But its collection is broad and deep. Its Oceanic art and carpet and textile collections are especially good, and it mounts thoughtfully ambitious exhibitions. — Smee
11. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Two hours from the nation’s capital, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond is a regional museum with national importance. A major expansion completed in 2010 added some 165,000 square feet of space and created one of the most inviting fusions of galleries and gardens of any museum in the country. The VMFA’s permanent collection is diverse and idiosyncratic, with important African, Asian and ancient collections, as well as a widely admired collection of art nouveau and art deco furnishings and decorative objects. Its temporary exhibitions also attract attention, including a fine Dawoud Bey exhibition this year and a new highly anticipated one of Southern photography. — Kennicott
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