Top 20 Art Museums of the Western World

by G. Fernández – theartwolf.com
Which are the best museums of the Western World? While such list is entirely subjective, we have tried to be as objective as possible, taking in consideration its collections and history. So here is a guide to the premier Museums of the Western World.

20 (and more) Museums you should know

1- The Louvre in Paris is arguably the world’s most famous Museum. Take an online tour through its wonderful collection of antiquities and painting, including -of course- Leonardo’s Gioconda

2- The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is America’s greatest art museum. Its spectacular collection is especially strong in American painting and Egyptian Antiquities.

3- The British Museum is England’s greatest museum -and one of the best in the world- of Ancient Arts and antiquities, with an excellent collection of Art from Ancient Egypt to the Middle Ages.

4- The Vatican Museums houses the inmense and outstanding Art collection of the Catholic Church, including the Sistine Chapel or Raphael’s The School of Athens

5- The Hermitage Museum (or Ermitage) is the most important Museum in Russia and also the largest Art collection in the world, with more than 3,000,000 million of artworks

6- The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna is one of the premier museums in the world. It houses an important collection of antiquities and an outstanding collection of European painting.

7- The National Gallery of London houses one of the world’s finest collection of paintings. It is arguably the most complete collection of European painting from the 13th to the 19th centuries

8- The Museum of modern Art (MOMA) houses the world’s best collection of modern and contemporary Art, featuring masterworks as Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon or van Gogh’s Starry night

9- El Museo del Prado (Prado Museum) is Spain’s most important museum, featuring the best collection of Spanish painting in the world.

10- The Museé d’Orsay in Paris is without doubt the best museum of impressionist and 19th century French painting in the world. Features masterworks from Monet, van Gogh, Renoir…

11- The Cairo Museum is by far the most complete collection of Egyptian Art in the world. Its most famous artworks are the objects from the Tomb of Tutankhamun, discovered in 1922

12- The Uffizi in Florence is the most important collection of Italian Renaissance painting. In this excellent website you can works such as Botticelli’s Venus or Giotto’s Ognisanti Madonna.

13- The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is one of the oldest and most respected Art institutions of North America, with an outstanding collection of Western Art.

14- The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is Netherlands National Museum. It houses the world’s most important collection of Dutch painting, including its star piece, Rembrandt’s The Nightwatch

15- The National Gallery of Washington features an extremely complete collection of painting from the 13th to the 20th century. Its “star sections” are Italian Renaissance and American painting

16- The Guggenheim Museum in New York was designed by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The Guggenheim Fundation has also important galleries in Bilbao, Venice, Berlin and Las Vegas.

17- The Tate Modern in London is arguably the most important collection of modern and contemporary Art in Europe. It houses pivotal works of artists such as Lichstentein, Pollock or Bacon

18- The Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris is France’s national museum for modern and contemporary Art, housed in an important contemporary building by Rogers and Renzo Piano

19- The Art Institute of Chicago houses one of the most outstanding Art collections of the United States, featuring masterpieces such as Seurat’s ‘Island of La Grande Jatte’

20- The Getty Center in Malibu is arguably the world’s wealthiest Museum, with a great collection of antiquities, paintings, and manuscripts. Works exhibited includes van Gogh’s Irises.

There are also a few names more deserving to be in this list: The Tate Britain, which houses the most complete collection of British Art including hundreds of works by Turner; the National Gallery of Scotland, with an important collection of European painting; the Pinacoteca di Brera, with a small but highly important collection of Italian painting, the Gemaldegalerie in Dresden and the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin, perhaps the best collections of European painting in Germany, the Thyssen Museum in Madrid and four important Museums in the East Coast, the Brooklyn Museum and The Frick Collection in NY, and the Philadelphia Art Museum and the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.