Field Museum of Natural History, home of Sue, the most complete tyrannosaur.
Museum of Science and Industry, home of U-505, which I was not hired to move to her new digs. If you don’t flinch when the boss suggests that 60 years of corrosion might cause her to collapse under her own weight you might get the job. I flinched.
I’ve visited MoMA’s gift shop many times. It’s the same thing as the real musuem, just about $30 cheaper.
I really enjoyed the Sci-Fi museum in Seattle, but for the love of Og stay away from the Experience Music musuem attached to it, unless you happen to be the world’s biggest Jimi Hendrix fan.
Also a huge fan of Boston’s Science Musuem. Great place for both kids and adults, on whole different levels.
Of the museums that made the list, I had the most fun in the Louvre. We spent days in there. It was fairly uncrowded, and all of those back stairways and winding passages made it seem like we really were exploring the hidden treasures of the castle.
Other favorite museums that didn’t make the poll:
The Freer Gallery, DC
The Phillips Collection, DC
Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh
SFMOMA
de Young, SF
Art Institute of Chicago
Museum of Fine Arts Boston
Museum of Anthropology at UBC, Vancouver
Galleria Borghese, Rome
Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence
Musee d’Orsay, Paris
Yeah, I love MoMA’s catalog.
I did the three-cities-in-ten-days tour of Europe in high school. I wish I’d had the time to really explore both the Louvre and the British Museum enough to do them justice. Of all the old stuff I saw on that trip, the exhibit that had the most effect on me personally was The Night Watch at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, but for sheer scope you can’t beat the British Museum. Da Vinci’s notebooks are way cooler than the Mona Lisa.
I’m a bit of a museum geek. I always check out the museums whenever I go somewhere. I used to be a dinosaur docent at the Field Museum, which got me free entrance to all of the Chicago museums. It was awesome. Anyway, museums I particularly like that have yet to be mentioned:
The National Anthropology Museum, Mexico City
The Hagia Sofia, Istanbul (it’s officially a museum!)
The Archaeology Museum, Istanbul
Goreme Open Air Museum, Goreme, Turkey
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
BTW, fusoya, my dad’s been to the Experience Music Project like three times, and he lives in California. He LOVES it. Of course, he is the world’s biggest Jimi Hendrix fan, so there you go.
I forgot to mention that the most interesting special exhibit that I’ve seen in the past year was the Dale Chihuly exhibit at the de Young. His work is probably fairly well-known now that he has a permanent piece on the ceiling at the Bellagio, but in case he’s unfamiliar to some, Chihuly is a glass sculptor who makes some traditional forms and some quite fanciful or unusual, often large, forms. Here’s the schedule for current and upcoming exhibitions of his work. If you can catch it, you won’t be disappointed.
Where’s the love for the Peabody? I’ve visited a couple of times as a kid, on family trips. If I ever go travelling, just for the sake of travelling, I’m going to spend a MONTH up there, and it’s all going to be at the Peabody, and I suspect that I will still miss some stuff.
Apparently I’m some kind of Idjit, all the museum’s that I go to are full of motorcycles and/or cars, I’ve been to:
Barber Motorsports museum (Leeds, Alabama)
National Motorcycle museum (Birmingham, England)
National Motorcycle museum (Anamosa, Iowa)
Lone Star Motorcycle museum (Vanderpool, Texas)
London Motorcycle museum (London, England)
Allen Motorcycle museum (London, England)
RAF museum (Herndon?, middle of nowhere, England)
BMW museum (Munich, Germany)
And too many small, private museums/shows/rallies to count.
My favourite is the British Museum.
Ones not listed that should be (that I’ve been to)
Peggy Guggenheim, Venice
National Portrait Gallery, London
Science Museum, London
Natural History Museum, London.
I consider myself a real connoisseur of museum gift shops, and let me tell you the trifecta of museum shopping is in Madrid. Between the Prado, the Reina Sofia, and the Palacio Real, you will be in museum retail heaven.
I would list the Reina Sofia as one of my favorite museums that didn’t make the poll. Also, the Albright-Knox in Buffalo, NY. It’s not only my hometown pick, it ranks up there with the Getty and MOMA for early 20th century collections in the U.S.
I came in to mention the Albright-Knox and the Detroit Institute of Arts. Both very good museums, the DIA with a little more range and focus, obviously.