The USA’s Top 10 Modern Art Museums | The Ultimate Guide
The 20th and 21st centuries have witnessed an unprecedented amount of development in art, with myriad artistic movements rising, staking out their place, and then stepping to the side to make way for something new. The museums below are some of the best places in the USA to view this changing and shifting landscape of art.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Founded in 1935, SFMOMA was the first modern art museum on the West Coast, and it still holds a notable place in the country’s art scene. It started out with a bang: in the first decade of its existence, it had already shown works by Diego Rivera and Henri Matisse, and granted Jackson Pollock his first solo exhibition. Various other acquisitions over the years eventually piled up, making this one of the premier destinations to view the work of American modern artists. The building is currently under renovation, but it is scheduled to open up again in early 2016, and in the meantime, pieces of SFMOMA’s collection are popping up all around the city.
1. MoMA
Art Gallery, Building, Museum, Opera House
2. Pérez Art Museum Miami
Art Gallery, Museum, Park
Pérez Art Museum Miami
PAMM, as the Pérez Museum is commonly known, is a relative newcomer on the list, but its unique collection definitely makes it worth a visit. Only actively collecting art since 1996, PAMM has managed to build up a significant and diverse collection of work from artists not only in the US, but also in all of the countries in the Atlantic Rim, which includes the Americas, Western Europe, and Africa. Some of the more notable aspects of the collection are its focus on African-American and Central and South American works.
Pérez Art Museum Miami, 1103 Biscayne Blvd, Miami, FL, USA, +1 305 375 3000
3. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Museum
4. The Whitney Museum of American Art
Building, Museum, Art Gallery
5. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Museum, Shop, Building
6. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Art Gallery, Building, Museum, School
7. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
Building, Museum, Market
8. Dia:Beacon
Art Gallery, Museum
The Dia Art Foundation has existed since 1974 with the sole aim of supporting the world of art, and while they have several locations throughout the country, Dia:Beacon in Beacon, NY, is their flagship space. Once a factory, the foundation converted it into an art museum where each of the spaces is specifically designed to house the artwork it contains, using elements like lighting and walls to display the artwork as they were truly meant to be displayed. Beacon is a site of pilgrimage for those who want to see modern and contemporary art at its finest.
9. Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art
Building, Museum
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