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SummerArts: College Art Museums

SummerArts: College Art Museums

Why are College Art Museums listed under SummerArts? Because summer is an excellent time to visit the many fine college art collections located in America.  Summertime campuses define bucolic – and are considerably less crowded than during the fall/spring school terms.

Almost every college has some form of art gallery.  While the vast majority limit themselves to touring exhibitions, the ones listed below have large permanent collections that are must-see if your summer plans (or any other plans) take you to the area.  Need another reason to visit a campus? Most college cafeterias are reasonably priced and open to the public (especially in the summer) and can be an excellent choice for a good, inexpensive meal.

Pacific

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley, CA)

The Berkeley Art Museum opened on the campus of UC Berkeley in 1970. The fine arts portion of the institution was established with a donation of 45 paintings from artist and teacher Hans Hofmann; today, its collection numbers more than 16,000 objects and 14,000 films and videos. ...more...

Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University (Stanford, CA)

Formerly the Leland Stanford Jr. Art Museum, the Cantor Center was re-opened in 1999 after being extensively damaged in two earthquakes. Visitors should definitely check out the Rodin sculpture garden, which contains 20 bronzes, and the center’s excellent collection of ancient Mediterranean, Asian, African, and Native American art. The modern and contemporary American art collection is also recommended. ...more...

Hammer Museum, UCLA (Los Angeles, CA)

One of three public arts units of the School of Arts and Architecture at UCLA, The Hammer Museum presents exhibitions of contemporary and historical work in all media of the visual arts. Committed to promoting cultural understanding, to introducing the work of underrepresented artists, and to interpreting art of the past and present, the Museum has a series of temporary exhibitions in addition to displaying selections from its permanent collections. ...more...

Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Salt Lake City, UT)

Located on the campus of the University of Utah, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) is Utah’s only visual arts institution that collects, exhibits, interprets, and preserves a comprehensive collection of original art objects, more than 18,000 of them, from throughout the world. UMFA is unique in its dual role as a university and a state art museum. ...more...

Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art (Santa Barbara, CA)

The 2011-2012 season marked the grand opening of the Westmont Museum of Art, whose roots trace back to the Westmont Art Center and Reynolds Gallery, dedicated in 1985. With a new museum space and a fully catalogued collection, the Westmont Museum of Art seeks to educate students and the larger community about the power and value of the visual arts. ...more...

Mountain

University of Arizona Museum of Art (Tucson, AZ)

The University of Arizona Museum of Art (UAMA) is part of UA’s ‘Museum Neighborhood’, a grouping of four museums in close proximity on the University campus. UAMA maintains a busy schedule of exhibitions, of works in all different media from all eras in art history to the present, including exhibitions by UA students and faculty. ...more...

Central

Blaffer Gallery (Houston, TX)

The Blaffer is the art museum of the University of Houston, and has one of the city’s premier contemporary art collections. It has exhibited the work of Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Julian Schnabel and architect Richard Neutra. Since it opened in 1973, it has been an important part of the city’s art scene, showing works by the Texas artist Michael Tracy, French royal jewels from the Smithsonian, and the work of Ansel Adams in the exhibition “American Icons”. ...more...

Blanton Museum (Austin, TX)

The University of Texas at Austin’s Blanton Museum is the largest university art museum in the United States, with over 17,000 works from Europe, the United States and Latin America in its permanent collection. Most notable is the Suida-Manning Collection, a superb gathering of Renaissance works by such masters as Veronese, Rubens, and Tiepolo ...more...

Chazen Museum of Art (Madison, WI)

UW-Madison’s Chazen Museum of Art was, for most of its existence, big – now, it’s crossed the line to gargantuan. Housed in the 90,000-square foot Conrad Elvehjem building since its opening in 1970, the Chazen nearly doubled in size in October 2011 with the dedication of a second building. This second, as yet unnamed, building is conjoined with the Elvehjem via a third-story walkway and features an auditorium for film and lectures, new gallery space, and a grand lobby. ...more...

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum (St. Louis, MO)

Part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum has one of the finest university collections in the United States. With strong holdings of 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century European and American paintings, sculptures, prints, installations, and photographs, the collection also includes Egyptian and Greek antiquities and more than one hundred Old Master prints. ...more...

Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Kansas City, MO)

The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art is located on the Johnson County Community College (JCCC) campus, and serves the school as well as the greater Johnson County area.  In 2006, JCCC was cited by Public Art Review magazine as one of the top 10 college campuses for public art in the United States. ...more...

Saint Louis University Museum of Art (St. Louis, MO)

The building that houses the Saint Louis University Museum of Art (SLUMA) dates to 1900, when it was built to house the St. Louis Club, one of the city’s most exclusive social clubs. After a fire in 1925, the club left the building, which changed hands numerous times before SLU purchased it for use as the home of the SLU Graduate School …more…

Spencer Museum of Art, U of Kansas (Lawrence, KS)

The Spencer Museum of Art, on the University of Kansas campus in Lawrence, houses a collection currently numbering nearly 36,000 artworks and artifacts in all media. Spanning the history of European and American Art from ancient to contemporary, the collection also includes broad and significant holdings of East Asian Art. ...more...

University of Mississippi Museum (Oxford, MS)

The University of Mississippi Museum and Historic Houses complex started as the Mary Buie Museum in 1939, and has since expanded to house a permanent collection comprised of holdings from Southern folk art, Greek and Roman antiquities, 19th Century scientific instruments, and American fine art. ...more...

Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery (Nashville, TN)

Recently relocated to the historic McKim, Mead and White building (also known as Cohen Memorial Hall) on Vanderbilt’s Peabody campus, the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery contains a permanent collection of nearly 6,000 works of art. ...more...

Eastern

Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC)

The Ackland Museum, open since 1958, is an academic unit of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  It is one of North Carolina’s most significant resources in the visual arts, with a collection including over 15,000 works of art.  Areas of specialty include Asian art, and works on paper, with additional concentrations of European masterworks, African and contemporary art, and pottery of North Carolina. ...more...

Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover, MA)

Located on the campus of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, 30 minutes north of Boston, the Addison Gallery’s collection of American art includes nearly 17,000 objects spanning the 18th century to the present. Created in 1931 by Thomas Cochran, the Addison is guided by his goal “to enrich permanently the lives of the students.” The gallery remains committed to serving the public through free admission and an education outreach program. ...more...

Allen Memorial Art Museum (Oberlin, OH)

The Allen Memorial Art Museum (AMAM) at Oberlin College has outstanding holdings of nearly 14,000 works of art, providing a comprehensive overview of the history of art. Founded in 1917 – and continuing to offer free admission nearly a century later – the museum has been recognized as one of the five best college and university art museums in the United States. ...more...

Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery (Greenville, SC)

Located on the campus of Bob Jones University, the Museum and Gallery holds one of the largest collections of European sacred art on the continent. Its collection focuses on the history of Christianity as interpreted by all of Europe’s master artists, from the early 14th through the late 19th centuries. This includes a comprehensive collection of paintings from all eras of European art, a collection of Orthodox icons from Russia and Greece, and Benjamin West’s paintings for King George III’s ” Chapel of the History of Revealed Religion.” ...more...

Bowdoin College Museum of Art (Brunswick, ME)

Rigorous, unassuming Bowdoin College, near the shore of Casco Bay in coastal Brunswick, Maine, is another in the proud tradition of small, intense Northeastern liberal arts colleges with a sloping, leafy campus and an art museum that invites discussion, observation, and enlightenment by way of a small but well-considered permanent collection. The BCMA was founded in 1811, and is housed in a domed McKim Mead White building that recently underwent a comprehensive renovation. ...more...

Butler Institute of American Art (Youngstown, OH)

The Butler Institute was the first museum dedicated to American art. The original structure, listed on the National Register of Historic places, was dedicated in 1919, and the Institute’s holdings now exceed 20,000 individual works. The Butler charges no admission fee, either at the main location or at its branch museums. These satellite facilities include the Salem branch, which presents selections from the Butler’s permanent collection, exhibitions by nationally-known contemporary and historic artists, and regional art, and the Trumbull branch, which focuses on important international artists whose works have profoundly influenced America, as well as exhibitions of works by contemporary master painters and sculptors. ...more...

Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College (Winter Park, FL)

With a collection of over 5,000 works, one of the largest and most distinguished art collections in Florida, the Cornell Fine Arts Museum (CFAM) is recognized as a leader among college museums. While the collection’s roots are over a century old, the museum recently underwent a major renovation, reopening its doors to the public in 2006. ...more...

Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont (Burlington, VT)

Since its founding at the University of Vermont in 1931, the Robert Hull Fleming Museum has grown into the largest art museum in the state. Its permanent collection now numbers approximately 25,000 pieces and spans millennia, with particular emphasis on 19th and 20th century American landscapes, 18th century British portraits, and, not surprisingly, works by Vermont artists from the mid-19th century to the present. All of this is housed in a charming Colonial Revival building, one of several on campus designed by William Mitchell Kendall of the legendary New York firm McKim, Mead and White. ...more...

Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA)

Harvard Art Museums consists of three museums that formerly were physically separate: the Fogg Art Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum. A new museum building designed by architect Renzo Piano will house all three museums in one facility. During the renovation, selected works from the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Sackler collections are on display at the Sackler Museum. ...more...

Hood Museum of Art (Hanover, NH)

Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum of Art has been collecting for over two centuries, yet it only found itself a permanent home less than three decades ago. It’s a fine thing that it ultimately did; the Hood is one of the finest college museums in the country. The permanent collection is broad and varied, with a particular concentration in African and Native American art; over all, the collection touches …more…

Lowe Art Museum (Miami, FL)

The small but encyclopedic museum – founded in 1950, it’s the oldest in Miami – has more than 9,000 objects arranged chronologically. The Lowe’s permanent collection has particular concentrations in African, Ancient American, and European art. In particular, the museum is strong in European works from the Renaissance and Baroque periods, courtesy of a donation by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. ...more...

Middlebury College Museum of Art (Middlebury, VT)

Middlebury College’s Museum of Art is compact and well-appointed, which is fitting given Middlebury’s status as one of the “Little Ivies.” The museum’s several thousand piece collection ranges from the fourth millennium BCE to the present and runs the gamut of media, with particular strength in 20th Century prints and photographs; notable also are the various works – chiefly sculpture – that dot the campus, including Robert Indiana’s iconic square …more…

Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, RI)

This museum is part of the city’s esteemed School of Design. Having grown along with the school, it is now the state’s leading art institution, with more than 80,000 objects from around the globe. Its first public galleries were established in 1893, and it has undergone several expansions to accommodate its growing collection. ...more...

Nasher Museum of Art (Durham, NC)

The Nasher Museum of Art, founded in 1969, is part of Duke University, and one of the preeminent art institutions in the region. Its permanent collection features more than 13,000 works from the ancient to the contemporary.  It has strong holdings in medieval and Renaissance art, African art, Greek and Roman antiquities, and ancient American art, but is currently building its contemporary art collection. ...more...

Neuberger Museum of Art (Purchase, NY)

Structurally unassuming, the Neuberger Museum of Art boasts a fairly broad and well-rounded collection for a museum its size. The Neuberger is particularly strong in African art, owing to a 1999 gift that swelled the museum’s holdings to nearly 300 pieces; its painting, photography and print collections are also worth a look. Those who may be feeling a bit more energetic might want to consider taking a long stroll …more…

Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State (University Park, PA)

With eleven galleries, a print-study room, a 150-seat auditorium, and an outdoor sculpture garden, the Palmer Museum on the Penn State University Park campus is a major cultural resource for the central Pennsylvania region. Founded in 1972 in a modest three-story building, the permanent collection has blossomed in the past thirty years to include over 6,000 works. With Old Master paintings and sculpture, international art, twentieth-century European works, and American …more…

Princeton University Art Museum (Princeton, NJ)

Princeton University’s Art Museum began life in the 19th century, its collection intended to be part of a groundbreaking curriculum in art scholarship at a time when few of the world’s universities offered schooling in art history. The original collection was a private donation of pottery and porcelain by William C. Prime (class of 1843), a New York journalist and founding trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Trumbull-Prime Collection (including his wife’s maiden name) was delivered in 1890 on completion of the fireproof building that was to house the collection and the University’s art history department. ...more...

Syracuse University Art Galleries (Syracuse, NY)

Wrapped as they are in a fairly generic name, and ensconced in a chilly northern town, it’s easy to overlook the Syracuse University Art Galleries. Art aficionados do so at their peril, however, as Syracuse University has quietly built itself a substantial permanent collection. Founded in 1874 – making it one of the oldest university collections in the United States – the SUArt Galleries collection numbers some 45,000 pieces; its current focus is on 20th century American art, specifically works on paper, and notable holdings include photography by Berenice Abbott and Philippe Halsman, wood engravings by Winslow Homer and prints by Jan Gelb. ...more...

Williams College Museum of Art (Williamstown, MA)

The first thing that visitors to the Williams College Museum of Art will likely notice is Louise Bourgeois’ 2001 sculpture, Eyes (Nine Elements), which was commissioned as part of the museum’s 75th anniversary. Another variation on a frequent Bourgeois theme, the sculpture’s title is accurate – it’s a collection of giant eyes, some bronze and some granite, two of which are set into the ground next to the museum’s main path. At night, the pupils light up. It’s a fitting introduction to the quirky WCMA, a teaching museum dedicated to instruction through art as well as about it. ...more...

Yale Center for British Art (New Haven, CT)

Donated to Yale by banking scion Paul Mellon, and housed in the last building designed by eminent architect Louis I. Kahn, this collection of paintings‚ sculpture‚ drawings‚ prints‚ rare books‚ and manuscripts is the largest and most comprehensive collection of British art outside the United Kingdom. ...more...

Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT)

This comprehensive museum originally opened in 1832 when Yale’s president arranged to buy paintings and miniatures from John Trumbull. Since then, the collection has grown primarily due to generous gifts from prosperous alumni. Well-known for this American collection, the museum also has several pre- and post-Impressionist paintings (including Van Gogh’s The Night Café) and a collection of modern (as in 1913-1929) art donated by arts patroness Katherine Dreier. ...more...

Pacific

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley, CA)

The Berkeley Art Museum opened on the campus of UC Berkeley in 1970. The fine arts portion of the institution was established with a donation of 45 paintings from artist and teacher Hans Hofmann; today, its collection numbers more than 16,000 objects and 14,000 films and videos. ...more...

Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University (Stanford, CA)

Formerly the Leland Stanford Jr. Art Museum, the Cantor Center was re-opened in 1999 after being extensively damaged in two earthquakes. Visitors should definitely check out the Rodin sculpture garden, which contains 20 bronzes, and the center’s excellent collection of ancient Mediterranean, Asian, African, and Native American art. The modern and contemporary American art collection is also recommended. ...more...

Hammer Museum, UCLA (Los Angeles, CA)

One of three public arts units of the School of Arts and Architecture at UCLA, The Hammer Museum presents exhibitions of contemporary and historical work in all media of the visual arts. Committed to promoting cultural understanding, to introducing the work of underrepresented artists, and to interpreting art of the past and present, the Museum has a series of temporary exhibitions in addition to displaying selections from its permanent collections. ...more...

Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Salt Lake City, UT)

Located on the campus of the University of Utah, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) is Utah’s only visual arts institution that collects, exhibits, interprets, and preserves a comprehensive collection of original art objects, more than 18,000 of them, from throughout the world. UMFA is unique in its dual role as a university and a state art museum. ...more...

Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art (Santa Barbara, CA)

The 2011-2012 season marked the grand opening of the Westmont Museum of Art, whose roots trace back to the Westmont Art Center and Reynolds Gallery, dedicated in 1985. With a new museum space and a fully catalogued collection, the Westmont Museum of Art seeks to educate students and the larger community about the power and value of the visual arts. ...more...

Mountain

University of Arizona Museum of Art (Tucson, AZ)

The University of Arizona Museum of Art (UAMA) is part of UA’s ‘Museum Neighborhood’, a grouping of four museums in close proximity on the University campus. UAMA maintains a busy schedule of exhibitions, of works in all different media from all eras in art history to the present, including exhibitions by UA students and faculty. ...more...

Central

Blaffer Gallery (Houston, TX)

The Blaffer is the art museum of the University of Houston, and has one of the city’s premier contemporary art collections. It has exhibited the work of Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Julian Schnabel and architect Richard Neutra. Since it opened in 1973, it has been an important part of the city’s art scene, showing works by the Texas artist Michael Tracy, French royal jewels from the Smithsonian, and the work of Ansel Adams in the exhibition “American Icons”. ...more...

Blanton Museum (Austin, TX)

The University of Texas at Austin’s Blanton Museum is the largest university art museum in the United States, with over 17,000 works from Europe, the United States and Latin America in its permanent collection. Most notable is the Suida-Manning Collection, a superb gathering of Renaissance works by such masters as Veronese, Rubens, and Tiepolo ...more...

Chazen Museum of Art (Madison, WI)

UW-Madison’s Chazen Museum of Art was, for most of its existence, big – now, it’s crossed the line to gargantuan. Housed in the 90,000-square foot Conrad Elvehjem building since its opening in 1970, the Chazen nearly doubled in size in October 2011 with the dedication of a second building. This second, as yet unnamed, building is conjoined with the Elvehjem via a third-story walkway and features an auditorium for film and lectures, new gallery space, and a grand lobby. ...more...

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum (St. Louis, MO)

Part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum has one of the finest university collections in the United States. With strong holdings of 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century European and American paintings, sculptures, prints, installations, and photographs, the collection also includes Egyptian and Greek antiquities and more than one hundred Old Master prints. ...more...

Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Kansas City, MO)

The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art is located on the Johnson County Community College (JCCC) campus, and serves the school as well as the greater Johnson County area.  In 2006, JCCC was cited by Public Art Review magazine as one of the top 10 college campuses for public art in the United States. ...more...

Saint Louis University Museum of Art (St. Louis, MO)

The building that houses the Saint Louis University Museum of Art (SLUMA) dates to 1900, when it was built to house the St. Louis Club, one of the city’s most exclusive social clubs. After a fire in 1925, the club left the building, which changed hands numerous times before SLU purchased it for use as the home of the SLU Graduate School …more…

Spencer Museum of Art, U of Kansas (Lawrence, KS)

The Spencer Museum of Art, on the University of Kansas campus in Lawrence, houses a collection currently numbering nearly 36,000 artworks and artifacts in all media. Spanning the history of European and American Art from ancient to contemporary, the collection also includes broad and significant holdings of East Asian Art. ...more...

University of Mississippi Museum (Oxford, MS)

The University of Mississippi Museum and Historic Houses complex started as the Mary Buie Museum in 1939, and has since expanded to house a permanent collection comprised of holdings from Southern folk art, Greek and Roman antiquities, 19th Century scientific instruments, and American fine art. ...more...

Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery (Nashville, TN)

Recently relocated to the historic McKim, Mead and White building (also known as Cohen Memorial Hall) on Vanderbilt’s Peabody campus, the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery contains a permanent collection of nearly 6,000 works of art. ...more...

Eastern

Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC)

The Ackland Museum, open since 1958, is an academic unit of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  It is one of North Carolina’s most significant resources in the visual arts, with a collection including over 15,000 works of art.  Areas of specialty include Asian art, and works on paper, with additional concentrations of European masterworks, African and contemporary art, and pottery of North Carolina. ...more...

Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover, MA)

Located on the campus of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, 30 minutes north of Boston, the Addison Gallery’s collection of American art includes nearly 17,000 objects spanning the 18th century to the present. Created in 1931 by Thomas Cochran, the Addison is guided by his goal “to enrich permanently the lives of the students.” The gallery remains committed to serving the public through free admission and an education outreach program. ...more...

Allen Memorial Art Museum (Oberlin, OH)

The Allen Memorial Art Museum (AMAM) at Oberlin College has outstanding holdings of nearly 14,000 works of art, providing a comprehensive overview of the history of art. Founded in 1917 – and continuing to offer free admission nearly a century later – the museum has been recognized as one of the five best college and university art museums in the United States. ...more...

Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery (Greenville, SC)

Located on the campus of Bob Jones University, the Museum and Gallery holds one of the largest collections of European sacred art on the continent. Its collection focuses on the history of Christianity as interpreted by all of Europe’s master artists, from the early 14th through the late 19th centuries. This includes a comprehensive collection of paintings from all eras of European art, a collection of Orthodox icons from Russia and Greece, and Benjamin West’s paintings for King George III’s ” Chapel of the History of Revealed Religion.” ...more...

Bowdoin College Museum of Art (Brunswick, ME)

Rigorous, unassuming Bowdoin College, near the shore of Casco Bay in coastal Brunswick, Maine, is another in the proud tradition of small, intense Northeastern liberal arts colleges with a sloping, leafy campus and an art museum that invites discussion, observation, and enlightenment by way of a small but well-considered permanent collection. The BCMA was founded in 1811, and is housed in a domed McKim Mead White building that recently underwent a comprehensive renovation. ...more...

Butler Institute of American Art (Youngstown, OH)

The Butler Institute was the first museum dedicated to American art. The original structure, listed on the National Register of Historic places, was dedicated in 1919, and the Institute’s holdings now exceed 20,000 individual works. The Butler charges no admission fee, either at the main location or at its branch museums. These satellite facilities include the Salem branch, which presents selections from the Butler’s permanent collection, exhibitions by nationally-known contemporary and historic artists, and regional art, and the Trumbull branch, which focuses on important international artists whose works have profoundly influenced America, as well as exhibitions of works by contemporary master painters and sculptors. ...more...

Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College (Winter Park, FL)

With a collection of over 5,000 works, one of the largest and most distinguished art collections in Florida, the Cornell Fine Arts Museum (CFAM) is recognized as a leader among college museums. While the collection’s roots are over a century old, the museum recently underwent a major renovation, reopening its doors to the public in 2006. ...more...

Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont (Burlington, VT)

Since its founding at the University of Vermont in 1931, the Robert Hull Fleming Museum has grown into the largest art museum in the state. Its permanent collection now numbers approximately 25,000 pieces and spans millennia, with particular emphasis on 19th and 20th century American landscapes, 18th century British portraits, and, not surprisingly, works by Vermont artists from the mid-19th century to the present. All of this is housed in a charming Colonial Revival building, one of several on campus designed by William Mitchell Kendall of the legendary New York firm McKim, Mead and White. ...more...

Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA)

Harvard Art Museums consists of three museums that formerly were physically separate: the Fogg Art Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum. A new museum building designed by architect Renzo Piano will house all three museums in one facility. During the renovation, selected works from the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Sackler collections are on display at the Sackler Museum. ...more...

Hood Museum of Art (Hanover, NH)

Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum of Art has been collecting for over two centuries, yet it only found itself a permanent home less than three decades ago. It’s a fine thing that it ultimately did; the Hood is one of the finest college museums in the country. The permanent collection is broad and varied, with a particular concentration in African and Native American art; over all, the collection touches …more…

Lowe Art Museum (Miami, FL)

The small but encyclopedic museum – founded in 1950, it’s the oldest in Miami – has more than 9,000 objects arranged chronologically. The Lowe’s permanent collection has particular concentrations in African, Ancient American, and European art. In particular, the museum is strong in European works from the Renaissance and Baroque periods, courtesy of a donation by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. ...more...

Middlebury College Museum of Art (Middlebury, VT)

Middlebury College’s Museum of Art is compact and well-appointed, which is fitting given Middlebury’s status as one of the “Little Ivies.” The museum’s several thousand piece collection ranges from the fourth millennium BCE to the present and runs the gamut of media, with particular strength in 20th Century prints and photographs; notable also are the various works – chiefly sculpture – that dot the campus, including Robert Indiana’s iconic square …more…

Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, RI)

This museum is part of the city’s esteemed School of Design. Having grown along with the school, it is now the state’s leading art institution, with more than 80,000 objects from around the globe. Its first public galleries were established in 1893, and it has undergone several expansions to accommodate its growing collection. ...more...

Nasher Museum of Art (Durham, NC)

The Nasher Museum of Art, founded in 1969, is part of Duke University, and one of the preeminent art institutions in the region. Its permanent collection features more than 13,000 works from the ancient to the contemporary.  It has strong holdings in medieval and Renaissance art, African art, Greek and Roman antiquities, and ancient American art, but is currently building its contemporary art collection. ...more...

Neuberger Museum of Art (Purchase, NY)

Structurally unassuming, the Neuberger Museum of Art boasts a fairly broad and well-rounded collection for a museum its size. The Neuberger is particularly strong in African art, owing to a 1999 gift that swelled the museum’s holdings to nearly 300 pieces; its painting, photography and print collections are also worth a look. Those who may be feeling a bit more energetic might want to consider taking a long stroll …more…

Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State (University Park, PA)

With eleven galleries, a print-study room, a 150-seat auditorium, and an outdoor sculpture garden, the Palmer Museum on the Penn State University Park campus is a major cultural resource for the central Pennsylvania region. Founded in 1972 in a modest three-story building, the permanent collection has blossomed in the past thirty years to include over 6,000 works. With Old Master paintings and sculpture, international art, twentieth-century European works, and American …more…

Princeton University Art Museum (Princeton, NJ)

Princeton University’s Art Museum began life in the 19th century, its collection intended to be part of a groundbreaking curriculum in art scholarship at a time when few of the world’s universities offered schooling in art history. The original collection was a private donation of pottery and porcelain by William C. Prime (class of 1843), a New York journalist and founding trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Trumbull-Prime Collection (including his wife’s maiden name) was delivered in 1890 on completion of the fireproof building that was to house the collection and the University’s art history department. ...more...

Syracuse University Art Galleries (Syracuse, NY)

Wrapped as they are in a fairly generic name, and ensconced in a chilly northern town, it’s easy to overlook the Syracuse University Art Galleries. Art aficionados do so at their peril, however, as Syracuse University has quietly built itself a substantial permanent collection. Founded in 1874 – making it one of the oldest university collections in the United States – the SUArt Galleries collection numbers some 45,000 pieces; its current focus is on 20th century American art, specifically works on paper, and notable holdings include photography by Berenice Abbott and Philippe Halsman, wood engravings by Winslow Homer and prints by Jan Gelb. ...more...

Williams College Museum of Art (Williamstown, MA)

The first thing that visitors to the Williams College Museum of Art will likely notice is Louise Bourgeois’ 2001 sculpture, Eyes (Nine Elements), which was commissioned as part of the museum’s 75th anniversary. Another variation on a frequent Bourgeois theme, the sculpture’s title is accurate – it’s a collection of giant eyes, some bronze and some granite, two of which are set into the ground next to the museum’s main path. At night, the pupils light up. It’s a fitting introduction to the quirky WCMA, a teaching museum dedicated to instruction through art as well as about it. ...more...

Yale Center for British Art (New Haven, CT)

Donated to Yale by banking scion Paul Mellon, and housed in the last building designed by eminent architect Louis I. Kahn, this collection of paintings‚ sculpture‚ drawings‚ prints‚ rare books‚ and manuscripts is the largest and most comprehensive collection of British art outside the United Kingdom. ...more...

Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT)

This comprehensive museum originally opened in 1832 when Yale’s president arranged to buy paintings and miniatures from John Trumbull. Since then, the collection has grown primarily due to generous gifts from prosperous alumni. Well-known for this American collection, the museum also has several pre- and post-Impressionist paintings (including Van Gogh’s The Night Café) and a collection of modern (as in 1913-1929) art donated by arts patroness Katherine Dreier. ...more...