Top 10 Museums in the United States
Pinning a national museum ranking to ten institutions is always partly arbitrary, but the ten below would feature on most informed lists of the country's most important museums. They cover the breadth of period, medium, and curatorial approach that distinguishes the leading museum nations.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Met on Fifth Avenue holds approximately two million objects spanning 5,000 years, from the reconstructed Temple of Dendur (gifted by Egypt in 1965) to contemporary American painting. Founded 1870. Pay-what-you-wish for New York State residents; fixed admission for others.
Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.
Nineteen museums plus the National Zoo, mostly along the National Mall. The National Air and Space Museum, the National Museum of American History, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture (opened 2016) are the most visited. All Smithsonian museums are free — funded by federal appropriations.
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York
MoMA on West 53rd Street holds the canonical European-American modernism collection: Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Van Gogh's The Starry Night, Matisse's Dance, and the largest institutional Pollock holding. A 2019 Diller Scofidio + Renfro expansion added 40,000 square feet.
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Founded by Andrew Mellon's 1937 bequest, the National Gallery holds the only Leonardo painting in the Americas — Ginevra de' Benci. I.M. Pei's East Building (1978) remains a masterwork of late-modernist museum architecture. Free admission.
Getty Center, Los Angeles
Richard Meier's hilltop campus in Brentwood, opened 1997, holds European paintings, drawings, sculpture, and decorative arts. The Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades houses the antiquities collection separately. Free admission; paid parking.
Art Institute of Chicago
Founded 1879 on Michigan Avenue, the Art Institute holds Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Hopper's Nighthawks, Wood's American Gothic, and an outstanding Impressionist collection. Renzo Piano's Modern Wing (2009) doubled the modern-art gallery space.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The MFA holds North America's most comprehensive Asian (particularly Japanese) art collection alongside major European and American holdings. John Singer Sargent's Daughters of Edward Darley Boit hangs in the gallery for which it was painted.
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The PMA on its Schuylkill hill (the Rocky steps) holds the largest Duchamp concentration outside Europe, including the original Étant donnés. Strong in American painting and one of the world's leading arms-and-armor collections.
Frick Collection, New York
The Frick on Fifth Avenue, in Henry Clay Frick's former mansion, gives the most intimate great-museum experience in the country: Vermeer's Officer and Laughing Girl, Bellini's St. Francis in the Desert, and three Rembrandt self-portraits in domestic-scale rooms.
Cleveland Museum of Art and others
The Cleveland Museum of Art (free admission, encyclopedic collection), the Detroit Institute of Arts (Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry frescoes), and the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth (Louis Kahn's 1972 building) form a remarkable second tier across the country.
These ten do not exhaust the country's museum landscape — every list of this kind makes painful omissions — but they offer a credible foundation for a serious museum trip.
Explore on the map
Pin every institution mentioned above using the interactive map — filter by country, collection type, or admission policy to plan a realistic itinerary.