<p>My friends and I want to go on a road trip and go to all of the best art museums on the east coast. So far we’re going to start at Detroit institute of art then go to the art institute of chicago then onto the toledo art museum and then to the metropolitan museum of art in nyc.</p>
<p>Philadelphia. DC has a couple. Boston, the smaller ones near Williams College.</p>
<p>What a fun roadtrip! I think it would cool to keep a diary on this. I’d be really interested in what you liked about the museums, how they seemed to differ. Not just in the content of their collections, but how they presented them, what the space was like, etc. Those aspects of museums fascinate me</p>
<p>You can start by hitting UMMA before it closes in two weeks!</p>
<p>The Farnsworth in Rockland, Maine, is nice. I think they’re part of a “Maine Art Museum Tour” promotion that includes some of the collections of colleges, too, which as I understand it have some real gems. I am sure many people can ring in here with good college collections worth seeing.</p>
<p>DC has numerous art museums. The National Portrait Gallery has been closed for 6 years and just finally reopened. In addition to the National Gallery and the Hirschorn, the less-visited Renwick is a delight. The private museums in DC (the Corcoran & the Phillips Collection, for example) are great. Few tourists make it out to the Kreeger in DC but it’s very worthwhile. The artwork is hanging on the walls of the house with lots of natural light. When you’re used to the sterility of most museums, it is amazing to see a masterpiece hanging next to an open window through which you can feel a breeze and hear birds singing.</p>
<p>The NYT has (in the past, at least) published a yearly guidebook that lists all the major art museums across the country and what they have on exhibit throughout the year. That could be a help if you can get your mitts on one.</p>
<p>Please, let me stow away and come along. I’m a great navigator.</p>
<p>You can start by hitting UMMA before it closes in two weeks!</p>
<p>Actually I was just there today. I had to catch the photography exhibit before it closed.</p>
<p>Some of my favorites:</p>
<p>Philadelphia:
Philadelphia Museum of Art</p>
<p>Barnes Foundation (don’t miss this one!)</p>
<p>Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts</p>
<p>Rodin Museum</p>
<p>Brandywine River Museum</p>
<p>New York:
Metropolitan Museum of Art</p>
<p>The Frick Collection</p>
<p>Toronto:
Art Gallery of Ontario</p>
<p>McMichael Canadian Art Collection</p>
<p>Rockwell Museum of Western Art in Corning, NY</p>
<p>Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum in Williamsburg, Va.</p>
<p>Canajoharie Library and Art Museum in Canajoharie, NY (fabulous collection of Winslow Homers in an unlikely spot!)</p>
<p>Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, NY</p>
<p>The Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC</p>
<p>Isabella Stewart Gardner in Boston.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.gardnermuseum.org/[/url]”>http://www.gardnermuseum.org/</a></p>
<p>On your way from Toledo to NYC you may want to check out a few museums in Pittsburgh. I’ve visited both the Carneige Art Museum and the Andy Warhol Museum. Carneige is a great museum and the Andy Warhol…is…well…Andy Warchol. I didn’t particularly like it, but if it’s your thing, it’s a must see!</p>
<p>In New York:</p>
<p>MOMA
Whitney (I like modern art)
Guggenheim
Met
Frick
Intl Center of Photography
American Craft Museum
Galleries–Check the New Yorker </p>
<p>Washington</p>
<p>Hirshhorn
National Gallery and East Wing
Corcoran</p>
<p>Chicago</p>
<p>Art Institute
Museum of Contemproary Art</p>
<p>And beyond the East Coast…</p>
<p>St Louis
Pulitzer Collection</p>
<p>San Fransisco</p>
<p>Museum of Art</p>
<p>Los Angeles
MOCA
Getty
Craft Museum</p>
<p>London</p>
<p>Tate
National
Vic and Albert
Saatchi Galleries</p>
<p>Paris</p>
<p>Rodin
Picasso
Musee d’Orsay
Musee Marmotten
Gallerie National
Louvre</p>
<p>Rome</p>
<p>The whole darn city
Churches with Caravaggios
Piazzas with fountains
Palazzos and churches with frescos
Vatican</p>
<p>Venice</p>
<p>Peggy Guggenheim Museum</p>
<p>Cairo</p>
<p>Egyptian Museum</p>
<p>Kyoto</p>
<p>Natinal Museum</p>
<p>Tokyo</p>
<p>National Museum of Modern Art
Contemporary museum of Art</p>
<p>Kyoto</p>
<p>National Museum of Contemporary Art</p>
<p>St Petersburg </p>
<p>Hermitage (H’s recommendation)</p>
<p>cheers, some of those might be a little difficult to do in a roadtrip on the east coast. ;)</p>
<p>Drew, A wonderful trip. I think the previous posters have mentioned all the big names. Id just like to put in a strong second for the Frick in New York and the Isabella Stewart Gardner in Boston. These are small jewel like museums with astonishing collections of priceless Renaissance and Baroque European paintings.</p>
<p>Also, if you can get to Western Massachusetts there are (as Barrons notes) three excellent museums in the Williams College area: The Clark (like the Frick and Gardner an astonishing collection of European paintings with special emphasis on the Impressionists), the Williams College Museum and Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. A word about the latter: this is really an extraordinary property an old mill that houses enormous and cutting edge works of art. There is nothing like it on the East Coast.</p>
<p>Most of the big colleges have good collections Yale, Harvard, Brown come to mind, but there are others Im sure.</p>
<p>Is there any particular era that you favor?</p>
<p>I think you need to make a reservation in advance for the Barnes Foundation, so might not fit into a fluid road trip. The trip sounds like a great idea, but you’ll have to prioritize and figure out how much time you want to devote to this adventure and how many art museums you can see before getting so burned out on art (it can happen) that you don’t enjoy the last half of the wonderful place you will be visiting.</p>
<p>the Wadsworth Antheneum in Hartford, CT is the oldest public art museum in the US</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.wadsworthatheneum.org/[/url]”>http://www.wadsworthatheneum.org/</a></p>
<p>"The most extraordinary collection of Tibetan art in the Western Hemisphere is on view in eight permanent galleries, the centerpiece of which is a Buddhist Altar consecrated in 1990 by His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama. </p>
<p>The Newark [New Jersey] Museum’s collection of Tibetan art has its origins in a remarkable group of items brought from the Sino-Tibetan borderland in 1911 by Dr. Albert L. Shelton, a medical missionary, with additional objects collected between 1914 and 1920. The Museum also acquired three other missionary collections from northeastern Tibet, significantly enriching its holdings in ethnographic and ceremonial art. Paintings, sculpture, ritual objects, dance masks, tents, saddles, headdress and weapons are among the featured objects."</p>
<p><a href=“Welcome to The Newark Museum of Art”>Welcome to The Newark Museum of Art;
<p>A few that haven’t been mentioned: Norman Rockwell Museum in Sotckbridge, MA. Freer Gallery (Asian Art) at the Smithsonian (DC). The DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Garden in Lincoln, MA, which has the nicest grounds I know of for a picnic—and a wonderful musical sculpture that is still one of my favorite pieces of art ever.</p>
<p>If you want my opinion, spend more time in one city and see more art there, so you see art in depth rather than in breadth. Otherwise, you’ll see a lot of the same famous artists (Monet, Cezanne, Rubens, etc.) over and over instead of learning more.</p>
<p>I will put in my vote for skipping the Barnes Foundation (which I had to go to when I was in high school and detested–as a friend said “just a lot of peachy nudes”)–but that’s just my opinion.</p>
<p>I did get carried away–but also forgot one of my faovrites in New York…</p>
<p>The Storm King Sculpture Park <a href=“http://www.stormking.org/aboutstormking.html[/url]”>http://www.stormking.org/aboutstormking.html</a></p>
<p>If you’re starting from MI, take a stop at the Carnegie Museum of Fine Arts in Pittsburgh, which has a pretty impressive collection of Impressionist work. It’s also housed right next to the Carnegie Natural History Museum, which means you can look at impressive rocks and fossils if you need a break from artwork. 
I’d normally recommend the Cleveland Fine Arts Museum to you as well, but unfortunately it’s closed for rennovations… beyond that my favorite art museums on the East Coast are the National Gallery in Washington DC, the Modern Museum of Art in New York City, and the Boston Museum of Art.</p>
<p>Dmd:</p>
<p>I’m so glad you mentioned the De Cordova Museum. It’s a wonderful place to enjoy outdoors sculpture. We also enjoy the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. It’s very idiosyncratic. </p>
<p>I also love the Rodin Museum in Phila. My niece really enjoyed the Guggenhein (she’s a future architect). Not an actual “museum” but very enjoyable also: the Cloisters in NY.</p>
<p>mattmom, yes, you’re correct. A reservation must be made to visit the Barnes because the town imposes restrictions on the number of visitors per week. During the summer months, the reservation should be made two weeks in advance. It’s worth it, though, particularly if the Impressionists are a favorite. The Barnes has the largest collection of Renoirs in the world, and an amazing collection of African art. If you go, be sure to check out the beautiful mural in the main gallery which Matisse painted after visiting Dr. Barnes.</p>
<p>A favorite of mine - in Winter Park Florida - The Morse Museum. It’s a small place that houses America’s largest collection of Tiffany glass. If you think you know Tiffany, you’ll be shocked at the size and variety of this collection. A quiet, non-crowded, inexpensive museum in a quiet part of town. Absolutely worth the trip if you’re anywhere near Orlando.</p>
<p>When in NYC, you may want to check out an exhibit at the Botanical Gardens.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nybg.org/chihuly.php[/url]”>http://www.nybg.org/chihuly.php</a></p>