Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The top museum cities in the country are NYC, Chicago, Philly, Boston and Washington but once you get beyond that Baltimore, Hartford, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St Louis, Kansas City, Richmond and New Orleans all have museums that range from surprisingly really good to genuinely world class. That is pretty much the roster of America's great regional city art museums.
A newer city has to be as big as or have as much money as an LA, Houston or Dallas to try to get into that group and it is still an uphill climb because the best art is so much more expensive than it used to be.
I would agree that many of the museums you listed are overlooked per the OP’s question, but to say that is the roster of America’s great regional city art museums is not true. Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Fort Worth, and Dallas all have art museums that rank ahead of the cities in your list.
Having said that, I love this thread because it has motivated me to check out more museums in the United States!
I would agree that many of the museums you listed are overlooked per the OP’s question, but to say that is the roster of America’s great regional city art museums is not true. Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Fort Worth, and Dallas all have art museums that rank ahead of the cities in your list.
Besides LA this is not clearly true. The Cleveland Art Museum, the Detroit Institute of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Art all arguably have better collections than any museum in those cities besides the Getty in LA. They are all world class art museums. Houston and Dallas have nice museums too but don't make the mistake of judging a museum by the size or grandeur of its building. That is the easy part to do these days. It is all about the collection. Those cities (Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Minneapolis) built their collections back when it was easier to do so and are full of significant works by big name artists, they have a depth that is hard to match by newer museums.
San Francisco has MOMA as the main feather in its cap but MOMA is a specialized modern art museum while the Legion of Honor, which is their general art museum is decent but not clearly better than a mid sized Midwestern city fine arts museum.
Western Aet sometimes gets over looked. Taos, Jackson Hole, and Fort Worth have great museums with that emphasis.
Houston's Bayou Bend, a museum of an Earlier American home is worth a visit as well.
Ive heard good thing about a museum in Tulsa and the one in North West Arkansas but can not spell/recall their names.
Pittsburgh has a lot of high end cultural attractions for its size. Their symphony comes to mind which typically is rated as one of the top in the US along with Cleveland too, another surprise to many
Besides LA this is not clearly true. The Cleveland Art Museum, the Detroit Institute of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Art all arguably have better collections than any museum in those cities besides the Getty in LA. They are all world class art museums. Houston and Dallas have nice museums too but don't make the mistake of judging a museum by the size or grandeur of its building. That is the easy part to do these days. It is all about the collection. Those cities (Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Minneapolis) built their collections back when it was easier to do so and are full of significant works by big name artists, they have a depth that is hard to match by newer museums.
San Francisco has MOMA as the main feather in its cap but MOMA is a specialized modern art museum while the Legion of Honor, which is their general art museum is decent but not clearly better than a mid sized Midwestern city fine arts museum.
Let’s agree to disagree. Anyone can do their own research and draw their own conclusions. Great art did not end in the 19th century. It continues to evolve just as it did in the earlier centuries.
Traveling exhibitions also negate the impact of collections held by any particular museum. Are there any museums in the US that have exhaustive collections of any great artist? It seems to me that most museums have their “signature” pieces and that’s it.
I think you can make your point that all those legacy cities have great art museums without diminishing the collections in the newer sunbelt cities. The comment is unnecessary and anyway very subjective.
Haven't been to the MFA there yet, but the Menil Collection complex (which includes the Cy Twombly museum, the Rothko Chapel (with a seminal Barnett Newman sculpture in front), and a number of other buildings is terrific and on its own would make the city an art destination.
They do have an impressive variety in their collection, I was surprised by how many Mesopotamian and Mycenae pieces they have, but any venue that can be done in half a day does not qualify as a destination IMHO, at least not on a national level.
Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens in San Marino California near Caltech university has a very good art collection. Huntington family were very rich art collectors. The campus includes 3 art buildings a 4th Library and science museumwith old books. This museum is overlooked as the gardens take the prize. The Getty collection, LACMA, Broad, Moca, Norton Simon museums are more visited and popular in LA area.
The Nelson-Atkins Art Museum in Kansas City is IMHO the best art museum in a non-Alpha American city.
Kansas Citians who came of age prior to about 1980 knew it as simply the "Nelson Art Gallery," which slighted Mary Atkins' sizable contribution to its endowment. (Nelson was the founder of The Kansas City Star; Atkins was a schoolteacher who got control of her real-estate-magnate husband's sizable fortune upon his death and left it for the establishment of an art museum upon her death in 1911. Nelson died four years later, but his estate didn't become available to endow an art museum until his wife passed away in 1927. The museum sits on the site of Nelson's mansion "Oak Hall," one room of which is preserved in the building.)
Which brings me to something I learned about the Nelson-Atkins on my last visit there, in 2018:
When the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art-Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts opened in 1931, its endowment was larger than that of any other extant American art museum save one: New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The young museum found that most of the greatest European works of art at the time had already been acquired by other museums, so it ended up assembling one of the largest collections of Asian (especially East Asian) art in the country.
Nelson's will forbade the museum to use its endowment to acquire art by artists who had not been dead at least 25 years. Henry Bloch's (the H in H&R Block) contribution, which built a new wing on the Nelson-Atkins' east side in the 1990s, gave it a sizable collection of contemporary and African art. But the larger collection of the former resides at the newer Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, another KC museum worth visiting; it's just two blocks west of the Nelson-Atkins, on the other side of the Kansas City Art Institute campus.
BTW, like the St. Louis Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins is also free to attend (though it does charge admission for traveling special exhibitions in the Bloch Wing).
I love the Nelson-Atkins.
Art enthusiasts know how much of an arts town Kansas City is, but casual observers might be surprised.
It's what old money there does with their money.
People might think of KC as a typical midwest sports town, but fans there sometimes lament that it's easier to get a museum or concert hall built than it is a new stadium.
Williamstown MA punches way above its weight for its size/remoteness - The Clark Art Institute and The Williams College Museum of Art.
Worcester MA also comes to mind.
New England generally is rich in small gems of museums scattered widely.
Agreed! The first museum that came to mind is the Worcester Art Museum. They have the largest Antioch mosaic in the United States, and they have acquired the collection from the now closed, Worcester-based Higgins Armory. They are working on the gallery to exhibit this collection! The museum has an excellent collection.
I also agree that New England in general has excellent museums. I've been meaning to visit the Clark, Fitchburg Art Museum, Cape Ann Museum, Currier Museum, and others.
I love the Nelson-Atkins.
Art enthusiasts know how much of an arts town Kansas City is, but casual observers might be surprised.
It's what old money there does with their money.
People might think of KC as a typical midwest sports town, but fans there sometimes lament that it's easier to get a museum or concert hall built than it is a new stadium.
This even extends to the for-profit art gallery (i.e., art for sale) world.
Kansas City's Crossroads Arts District originated with the opening of the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in one of the district's abandoned warehouses in 1980.
By the following year, the galleries in the district had organized a "First Friday" art gallery crawl. That makes it as old as the (I think) better-known one here in Old City Philadelphia.
Those warehouses are now filled with art dealers, architectural and design firms, and related activities. And they've stimulated a housing boom that has run up property values to the point where the State of Missouri enacted a law that gives the art- and design-related businesses in this district a break on their property taxes.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
