When we travel, we often visit the art museum of a city. Many have been quite good.
Please use this thread to list an art museum that you have been to that possibly might interest others. Explain why it's particularly interesting. Add a link to the website.
Zagreb, Croatia: The Croatian Museum of Naïve Art is a favorite of ours. It is featured in RS Croatia program.
The style of art is different than in most places. The colors are quite strong. The painting is done on glass. The "naive" term indicates that the artists are mostly folk artists. The subject matters of many paintings are examples from rural life - farms in winter, pigs going home.
It's a small museum, not expensive. Perhaps there are 4 rooms of the size of a normal living room.
https://www.kunsthaus.ch/en/sammlung/
Kunsthaus, Zurich
Comprehensive but not overwhelming; excellent examples of a wide spectrum of genres, including many works by Munch and Giacometti.
https://www.nationalgalleries.org/visit/scottish-national-gallery
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh
Absolutely delightful--comfortably sized, well-lit, generally really high-quality paintings.
https://www.afmuseet.no/en
Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo
Very good collection of modern art in a great waterfront setting.
London: Royal Academy of Arts on Piccadilly,
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/
One of many highlights of our last trip, just before the COVID-19 situation became extreme for all, it featured an almost incredible Picasso show. Works in a multitude of media, from collections around the world and throughout his career, plus artifacts like his personal printing press, made up a massive display. The layout and lighting were perfect. They really put on a fantastic show, and their own collection is masterful, too. I’d never heard of it and now add it to London’s many other world-class art museums. The building, and its courtyard with gilded wrought gate, are works of art, too.
The two museums which added the most to our 2019 trip were:
The Alte Pinakothek in Munich. This is a traditional museum, with a large number of Dutch paintings from the 1700s. The aspect of the museum which was most striking was the recorded discussions of the paintings. I have been to museums hundreds of times (at least 100 times to the Art Institute in Chicago), and I cannot remember a recorded guide which did a better job explaining the paintings, and setting them within the milieu of their time. Plus there is a single painting which I can see in my mind's eye even today, of the painter and his new bride. It showed such tender treatment of the woman, who was dead within a year of the painting's completion.
The Museum of Fine Art in Budapest on Hosok Ter. This is a standard museum. Generally I don't care much for religious art. The extremely extensive and well-curated religious art collection here was a revelation to me. The display is chronological, and the recorded program unfolds the innovations and new ideas which occurred in religious are from the 1200s to the 1900s.
Good list happening:
Sofia, Bulgaria — The Icon Museum, underneath the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. Many, many Orthodox icons, ancient to contemporary, from very small to extremely large. Very well exhibited. Nice hand-painted icon shop by the entry.
Barcelona, Spain — National Museum of Catalan Art, on Montjuic. Four different sections of different types/eras of art. I especially loved the works with frescoes recovered from medieval churches in nearby France (as I remember). Very nice restaurant there too.
The Borgese in Rome, Caravaggio and all those amazing sculptures. Good crowd control means it’s never too crowded.
The Guggenheim in Venice. Modern art in a small canalside palazzo. Pleasant garden with interesting art pieces and a nice cafe to grab a bite to eat. Never seems to be overwhelmed with people. It’s a nice change from all the Renaissance art in Venice.
The Gallery of Cycladic Art in Athens....a very different type of Ancient Greek art.
Is this one of those American/English things?
'Quite good' to me means its ok, but it could be an awful lot better. Where as i believe in the States it means 'very'!
I understand people applying for jobs in UK have been turn down for the post cause there American reference has said they were quite good at their job.....
Two countries seperated by the same language😀
I have been to most of the World's best museums
1) Lourve
2) Prado
3) Vatican Museum
4) Accademia in Florence
5) Uffizi in Florence
6) Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia
7) Archeological Museum in Istanbul
8) New Acropolis Museum in Athens
9) Archeological Museum in Athens
10) Archaeological Museum in Cairo, Egypt
11) Chinese artifacts in museum in Taipei, Taiwan
12) British Museum, London
13) Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC
14) Several great museums from Smithsonian, Washington, DC
15) American Museum of Natural History, NYC
16) Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
17) Pergamom Museum, Berlin
18) Holocast Museum, Washington, DC
19) Arsenal Museum, the Kremlin, Moscow
20) Vasa Museum, Stockholm
We love a good Ethnographic museum. The one we visited in Warsaw was a favorite.
Paul, we love that museum too. We were in a small shop near the Cathedral and they had some art work for sale in this style, also on glass. They wouldn’t ship, no matter how much I offered them and I wasn’t 100% sure the picture would make it in one piece. I am sorry I didn’t try. We are scheduled to be in Zagreb in October and I will look for the shop and pick one up.
There are a lot of great museums in Europe. A few out of the way ones that I was amazed with had some items that were very rare and not seen in other museums.
In Dresden, Germany: The Grünes Gewölbe (Green Vault) is renowned worldwide as one of the richest treasure chambers in Europe.
https://www.skd.museum/en/besuch/
In Lisbon, Portugal: Gulbenkian Museum can take you from Ancient Egypt to the present day across its two collections. It amazing private collection that was moved from Paris to Lisbon prior to the start of WWII.
https://gulbenkian.pt/museu/en/welcome/
In Vienna, Austria: I always visit the Albertina with it's great collection of paintings. My visit in 2016 had a special collection of Pointillismus art by Seurat, Signac, and Van Gogh to name a few that was just amazing.
https://www.albertina.at/en/home
And for the best collection of Klimt's paintings anywhere you have to go see "The Kiss" at the Belvedere.
https://www.belvedere.at/en/kiss-gustav-klimt
Portugal - I totally agree with the Gulbenkian listing above!
Madrid - in addition to the great Prado and the modern Reina Sophia museums, a treat is the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza , https://www.museothyssen.org/en/ .
Its fabulous collection spans centuries of art, with discoveries and treasures, no matter your preferences or curiosity for artists or styles. Smaller than the Prado, so easier to fit in your vacation day.
The Mucha Museum in Prague is an enjoyable museum featuring Mucha’s early 20th century posters especially of women. He painted the Prague Epic, large scale paintings of history that were in storage last year. Hopefully will be exhibited at some time in its own museum in Prague.
My husband even enjoyed the Naive museum in Zagreb. Highly recommend, as the early poster suggested.
The Orangerie Museum in Paris is excellent for Impressionist art. The basement has a overview collection of artists and it is small. People think if it just having Claude Monets gigantic water lilies paintings but it is much more. If you like Monet, a day trip to Giverney is a must.
Liked Toulouse Lautrec’s museum in Albi France. Small narrow focused museums have become a favorite of ours.
We explored some very good ones in Belgium! A couple of stand-outs:
Brugge's Groeninge Museum: it's not very large but has a valuable collection of Flemish works spanning 6 centuries. Among the Flemish Primitives are Van Eyck's ridiculously detailed "Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele” and the "St Nicholas Altarpiece" by a Primitive painter known only as the Master of the Legend of St Lucy. There are also some wonderful paintings of a long-ago Brugge and her citizens, nicely outfitted in the fashions of the eras.
Brugge's St-Janshospitaal: an art museum isn't the primary function of this one - which has a fascinating history! - but its excellent collection of six Hans Memling works is the delicious icing on this cake. The “The St. John Altarpiece” and “Shrine of St Ursula” are not to be missed.
Antwerp's Museum Mayer van den Bergh: I enjoyed much of this 19th century collector's treasure trove of Gothic and Renaissance works from Northern Europe very much! The building, an early 20th-century facsimile of a 16th-century townhome, was built specifically to showcase the collection of paintings, carvings, sculpture, illuminations and whatnot. Lots of folks come here for Bruegel the Elder's "Mad Meg" but there's something there for almost any art lover. I especially liked some of the carved pieces, such as this one:
A couple of lesser known art museums that I can recommend:
Lousiana
A museum of modern art in Humlebæk, about 35 km north of Copenhagen.
https://www.louisiana.dk
The Zorn museum in Mora, Sweden.
Anders Zorn is probably one of the most famous Swedish painters and was in his time especially famous for his portraits and travelled all over the world to paint portraits, including a couple of official US presidential portraits. But his works are more diverse and he even did some sculptures. The Zorn museum next to his home is today a great place to see his works, and there are guided tours of his home that I really can recommend. It is a very interesting building and says a lot about him as a person.
https://zorn.se/en/
We went to the Louisiana Museum 15 years ago as a stop off on the way to the ferry to Sweden. It was a joy to experience such an unexpected modern art museum. Worth a bus ride and day trip out of Copenhagen. I had forgotten the name.
A few years ago, we made an art trip to Provence (my choice, husband indulged me). I'm a fan of the impressionists. There's a book: "Artists and Their Museums on the Riviera" by Barbara Freed. There are many more museums than we could cover, but we were able to visit the Picasso Museum in Antibes, the Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer, the Maeght Foundation in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, the Chagall and Matisse museums in Nice, the Cocteau Chapel in Villefranche-sur-Mer, the Cocteau Museum in Menton and, perhaps most memorably, the Matisse Chapel in Vence. Wonderful trip! Wonderful art!
