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I grew up on the East Coast so I really love The Met, The Gueggenheim, MOMA NY, and the Smithsonians in DC. I like to visit art museums when I go to a new city, that's what we did when I was growing up. I recently went to the Milwaukee Museum of Art, what an amazing building! I live in the Phoenix area now and I really love some of the things in the Phoenix Art Museum, I always enjoy going there.
I really like The Clark. It has a nice collection of late 19th century academic art with works by Gerome and Bouguereau. It is located in Williamstown, MA.
Being originally from Chicago, I would have to rate The Art Institute right up there. I also loved the Prado Museum in Madrid and the Uffizi in Florence. I haven't seen the Louvre but am sure I would love it.
The Louvre was an unforgettable experience. When I was stationed in Great Lakes, did visit the Art Institute in Chicago, as well as the amazing Natural History Museum. Years ago, attended a Leonardo daVinci exhibit in Vancouver, Canada. Spent the whole day there looking at his phenomenal art, sculptures and inventions.
I'd like to add one more museum to my previous list:
The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena California
I hadn't been there for many years but was there yesterday and was astounded all over again at what a perfect collection they have.
Norton Simon was an industrialist who collected European paintings, some sculpture, and Indian and SouthEast Asian art. Even though he didn't really begin collecting until the 1950's, he managed to put toghether a first rate collection spanning the early Renaissance thru the early Twentieth Century.
It is a fairly small museum, so you don't get "museum fatigue" having to walk for hours seeing everything. One wing houses European painting from the early Renaissance to the early 19th Century. The only painting by Raphael in the western United States is here- a small beautiful "Madonna and Child". The colors just simply glow. There is a gallery of Spanish paintings, including the museum's most famous work- Francisco de Zurbaran's "Still Life with Oranges and Lemons" There is such a spiritual intensity to this spare, simple, composition that is almost overwhelming. Just stand in front of it for a few minutes and you will see what I mean. I won't give a list of everything here, but you will see masterpiece after masterpiece by Rembrandt, Rubens, Bassano, Botticelli, Tiepolo, Claude, Poussin, and many others.
The other wing houses the collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Twentieth Century art. There is a whole gallery dedicated to Degas- paintings, sculpture, drawings, pastels. You really can't see anything like it anywhere. Monet, Pissarro, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Renoir, they're all here represented by superb examples. Most memorable for me was Van Gogh's portrait of his mother. You can't appreciate Van Gogh through reproductions. You have to see the originals to appreciate how he applied the paint in such thick layers and brush strokes. His paintings are literally 3 dimensional. The Asian collection is downstairs and I have to admit I didn't have time to visit it yesterday, but have seen it before. It has a great collection of Indian sculpture that provides an interesting counterpoint to the European art upstairs.
It was cloudy and sprinkling yesterday in southern California, and their garden between the two wings, with a lily pond and sculpture spread about, was so magical and peaceful.
If you ever visit southern California, and are interested in art, make a side trip to Pasadena (which is worth a visit in itself) to see this museum.
I especially like small, free, unhurried museums where I can spend a lot of time basically alone with the collections without a lot of hoopla and crowds. The Mabel Brady Garvan Collection at Yale is one. As a young painter I worked in the northern Renaissance misch techniques in the manner of van Eyck, van der Weyden, and Breugel, so the Busch-Reisinger in Cambridge (Harvard) for northern Renaissance and 20th century northern European paintings has been a favorite over the years. I would also say that seeing the once-in-a-lifetime exhibit of paintings of (Jean-Baptiste-Simeon) Chardin on loan from diverse collections around the world at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts 35 or so years ago was a pivotal life-changing experience for me.
The Allen Museum of Art is a nice little museum at Oberlin College. It is closed right now for renovation until spring. The neat thing about this museum is the Student Art Loan program. Each student can borrow an original work of art to hang in their dorm room for the year.
I have to add those two to my list , recently visited in Santa Fe :
The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture ( their collection of South-West Native American pottery is simply breath-taking) and some fantastic sculptures too.
The Museum of International Folk Arts ( also a world class collection)
And I loved the Georgia O'Keefe museum too .
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