Beyond the Blockbuster: Art Destinations Worth the Trip This Summer
Every summer I find myself recommending many of the same destinations. They aren't necessarily the museums with the biggest exhibitions or the newest headlines. Instead, they're places where the permanent collection, the architecture, or the landscape is compelling enough to justify the trip on its own. Whatever special exhibition happens to be on view is simply a bonus.
Some are an easy train ride or drive from New York. Others are worth planning an entire weekend around. All reward lingering rather than rushing, and all remind us that some of the most memorable art experiences happen well beyond the familiar museum circuit.
Northeast
Dia Beacon is one of the museums I return to again and again, regardless of what's temporarily on view. Housed in a former Nabisco box-printing factory overlooking the Hudson River, it gives artists such as Richard Serra, Walter De Maria, Michael Heizer, Robert Ryman, and Louise Bourgeois something few museums can: space.
Richard Serra's monumental steel sculptures become physical experiences as you walk through and around them. Robert Ryman's paintings reveal extraordinary subtlety in changing natural light. Even Gerhard Richter's Six Gray Mirrors was created specifically for this building, responding to its architecture and atmosphere.
Allow yourself at least half a day. This is a museum that rewards slowing down.
Storm King Art Center | New Windsor, New York
Storm King is almost impossible to understand through photographs. The camera compresses what makes it extraordinary.
Spread across 500 acres, the collection asks you to walk through it—to experience sculpture in changing light, across hills and open fields, rather than from one fixed viewpoint. Even during the busiest weeks of summer, it's remarkably easy to find quiet corners where you feel as though you've stumbled upon a work rather than arrived at it.
The scale isn't simply impressive; it's essential to the experience.
Olana | Hudson, New York
Frederic Edwin Church didn't just build a house overlooking the Hudson Valley. He designed an entire landscape.
Inspired by his travels through the Middle East, Church conceived Olana as a complete work of art, carefully composing everything from the Persian-inspired house to the sweeping views beyond it. There is no traditional museum collection here because the place itself is the masterpiece.
Many visitors head straight to Hudson without stopping. I would encourage making Olana the destination.
The Clark Art Institute | Williamstown, Massachusetts
The Clark is one of those museums that seems to grow richer with every visit. It takes a bit more effort to reach than many of its peers, which may explain why it remains one of the country's great underappreciated museums.
The collection is exceptional—particularly its Impressionist paintings—but what makes the experience memorable is the setting. In summer, the museum's grounds become as much a part of the visit as the galleries themselves.
MASS MoCA | North Adams, Massachusetts
Few museums make such effective use of industrial architecture as MASS MoCA. The former factory complex gives contemporary artists room to think big, whether in James Turrell's immersive light installations, Sol LeWitt's wall drawings, or Anselm Kiefer's monumental works.
If you're already making the trip to the Berkshires, pair it with the Clark. Together they make one of the most satisfying weekends for art lovers anywhere in the Northeast.
Mid-Atlantic
Glenstone | Potomac, Maryland
Glenstone has quietly become one of the most remarkable museum experiences in America.
Its combination of architecture, landscape, and contemporary art encourages a different pace of looking. Timed entry reservations—often booked weeks in advance—mean galleries never feel crowded, and visitors are encouraged to spend real time with individual works rather than move quickly from one to the next.
A little planning is required, but the experience is entirely worth it.
Fallingwater & Kentuck Knob | Southwestern Pennsylvania
Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater deserves every bit of its reputation, but I always recommend visiting nearby Kentuck Knob as well.
Together they offer a fuller picture of Wright's extraordinary ability to unite architecture and landscape. Kentuck Knob's outdoor sculpture collection adds another dimension, making this one of the most rewarding day trips for anyone interested in the relationship between art, architecture, and nature.
Brandywine Museum of American Art | Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania
Set within a beautifully restored nineteenth-century grist mill along the Brandywine River, this museum feels deeply rooted in the landscape that inspired generations of American artists.
The Wyeth family naturally anchors the collection, but the building and river setting are every bit as memorable. It's the kind of museum best enjoyed without an agenda—simply allowing yourself a slow afternoon.
Beyond the Northeast
If your summer travels take you farther afield, several museums consistently find their way onto my list of recommendations.
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art | Bentonville, Arkansas
Crystal Bridges surprises many first-time visitors. Moshe Safdie's architecture sits gracefully within 120 wooded acres, while the collection offers one of the finest surveys of American art anywhere, from colonial portraiture through the present.
The Menil Collection | Houston, Texas
The Menil Collection remains one of my favorite museums in the country. Renzo Piano's intimate building, the surrounding residential neighborhood, the nearby Rothko Chapel, and the Menil Drawing Institute combine to create an experience that feels unusually calm and deeply considered.
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art | Kansas City, Missouri
In the Midwest, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art pairs an outstanding collection with Steven Holl's remarkable Bloch Building and one of the country's finest sculpture parks, while Cranbrook demonstrates how architecture, sculpture, and design can coexist across an entire campus.
On the West Coast, the Getty Villa offers one of America's most distinctive museum experiences, recreating an ancient Roman villa overlooking the Pacific. For a quieter afternoon, the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena rewards repeat visits with an extraordinary collection that far exceeds what its modest scale might suggest.
And for those willing to venture to far West Texas, the Chinati Foundation in Marfa remains unlike anywhere else—a place where Donald Judd's permanent installations simply could not exist in any other setting.
Europe
Many of my favorite museum experiences in Europe share this same quality: the building, landscape, and collection feel inseparable.
The Fondation Maeght in the south of France, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art outside Copenhagen, Fondation Beyeler near Basel, and Yorkshire Sculpture Park all demonstrate that great museums are about much more than the objects they contain. They are carefully composed environments, where architecture, gardens, landscape, and art work together to create something unforgettable.
Temporary exhibitions come and go. They should.
But the museums I find myself recommending year after year are the ones whose permanent collections—and the places built around them—continue to reward repeat visits. If you're looking for an art excursion this summer, I'd start with these.