What does New York lack despite its size that other Acela metros have? (places, America)
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As mentioned by another poster, that definition of what a "museum" is often is subjectively used. Los Angeles is not a "museum" city like that of what you find in Europe or even Washington. Yes there could be a list of "museums" you can pull showing the most in LA but the museum experience is not more grand than what you'll find in most of those other places. Many of which have significantly more "museum space" by square footage.
I suspect alot of the art in LA museums will be modern (the Getty might be an exception) because the rare classics by famous artists of the past tended to be bought up by European and to a lesser extent American Northeast and Midwest museums when it was easier to get before WW1.
In other words, it would be extremely difficult today to put together today a museum with both the size and the quality of the collection that the MET has in NYC, the Louvre in Paris or the British museum in London.
This is not museum space overall, just counting more "museums". Los Angeles has lots of museums in total, but many aren't all that large. Museum space overall in LA is dwarfed by Washington DC, and New York by square footage easily.
Some European cities I've been to on that list have museums just in a rowhome, or as ground level retail space of a building. The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam is the size of a micro-mini hotel.
All you have to do is simply look at the list of most visited museums in the World.
I’m actually in Los Angeles right now and having a great time in Huntington Museum in San Marino. Been going there since the year 1991. i love Getty and the Broad too. I guess I’m a museum wh*re, I enjoy almost all museums even the mediocre ones like Palm Springs and Denver ones. I was in Europe (London and Paris) earlier this year for three months and had my share of the museums on your link with the “most visit” in the world, but smaller museums aren’t automatically “less” or unimportant. The “niche” museums such as La Maison de Balzac, La Maison de Victor Hugo, or the newer (2006, designed by Jean Nouvel.) Musée de Quai Brandy-Jacques Chirac (Indigenous art, Oceania art, Asian and American art) have their place and significance, even though they are not as “must see” or iconic as the well-established big dogs.
Smaller cities also can and do have high-quality and respectful museums as well: Detroit, Cleveland and Minneapolis.
It’s also quite a personal taste (therefore highly subjective.) in viewing what you consider a great museum. I have a close friend who’s an art historian who studied history, theory and museum practice as her master degree, even she can’t be the best authority to tell you what museums are absolutely better than another.
The first one is behind a paywall so I can't see their methodology, while the second one is something of a click bait that scrolls and the author doesn't say where they get their number from. The articles also includes Chengdu and Shanghai but not DC which speaks to how useless it is as travel advice.
Honestly it doesn't really matter to me which city has more, as anything after the top 20, even in New York, aren't really places most people or me would travel to see. They are the kind of places where people would stop by if they were in the area, like the cottage off Crystal Cove that tells you about the Japanese farmers who used to live in the area before they were interned.
My initial comment doesn't really say LA couldn't have a higher number or that any methodology that includes libraries with a room for exhibits is automatically invalid. My point was saying LA has the largest number of museums is misleading because museums vary greatly in size and quality of their collections.
So your point can stand, and mine is a qualifier that museums aren't commodities that can be added up to compare.
Honestly it doesn't really matter to me which city has more, as anything after the top 20, even in New York, aren't really places most people or me would travel to see. They are the kind of places where people would stop by if they were in the area, like the cottage off Crystal Cove that tells you about the Japanese farmers who used to live in the area before they were interned.
There are some museums (railroad museums especially fall into this category) that are niche collections but draw visitors from a wide area because they are fans or otherwise deeply interested in the subject matter of the collection.
Bizarre and quirky museums, like the Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, also tend to attract curiosity-seekers (the folks who used to read the old newspaper feature "Ripley's Believe It or Not!", for instance), though most such types won't make a trip to where they're located just to see that museum (so they fall into your above category).
Come to think of it, there is a quirky — it's not really a museum, because it's out in the open and it contains only one object, so maybe "display" is more appropriate — that does attract curiosity-seekers who travel to the place where it's located just to see it, because there's really nothing else to see in that place:
The World's Largest Ball of Twine in Cawker City, Kan. (According to the Wikipedia article that begins with this tourist attraction, there are several other balls of twine that can lay claim to the "world's largest" title in some fashion.) SimCity players can put a World's Largest Ball of Twine in their city as a park to boost population.
I’m actually in Los Angeles right now and having a great time in Huntington Museum in San Marino. Been going there since the year 1991. i love Getty and the Broad too. I guess I’m a museum wh*re, I enjoy almost all museums even the mediocre ones like Palm Springs and Denver ones.
Good for you! Nothing wrong with that, whatsoever. We need more people who are seriously into art/the arts; the world would be a lot more understanding ... and better.
Good for you! Nothing wrong with that, whatsoever. We need more people who are seriously into art/the arts; the world would be a lot more understanding ... and better.
Thank you. I feel heard.
Art, visual art, music, creativity, aesthetics and the ability to appreciate/create a conversation between storytelling and imagination are probably, at the risk of sounding pretentious, my raison d’être .
There are always something new or interesting to discover in each museum/gallery, no matter how small, obscure and “fringed” it is.
There are some museums (railroad museums especially fall into this category) that are niche collections but draw visitors from a wide area because they are fans or otherwise deeply interested in the subject matter of the collection.
Bizarre and quirky museums, like the Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, also tend to attract curiosity-seekers (the folks who used to read the old newspaper feature "Ripley's Believe It or Not!", for instance), though most such types won't make a trip to where they're located just to see that museum (so they fall into your above category).
Come to think of it, there is a quirky — it's not really a museum, because it's out in the open and it contains only one object, so maybe "display" is more appropriate — that does attract curiosity-seekers who travel to the place where it's located just to see it, because there's really nothing else to see in that place:
The World's Largest Ball of Twine in Cawker City, Kan. (According to the Wikipedia article that begins with this tourist attraction, there are several other balls of twine that can lay claim to the "world's largest" title in some fashion.) SimCity players can put a World's Largest Ball of Twine in their city as a park to boost population.
I go to a lot of these niche ones. There's one in Houston about funerary arts that is one of my favorite. However if you read a full list of museums in large cities a lot of those are things like old school houses or galleries of some obscure artists. These do add value and should be counted as metrics for things like civic engagement or interest in arts.
True. A really good crab cake does not exist in NYC. I searched for years and have been disappointed so many times that I gave up.
This is not lacking since crab cakes are a Maryland thing. I have never woke up in my bed in nyc in my 32 years to go look for a crab cake.
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