The 17 acres of display space at the Metropolitan Museum of Art are filled with treasures that have enthralled visitors since 1870. From ancient Sasanian textiles to Henry VIII's armor, from the world's oldest piano to works by Dutch artists such as Vermeer, from extraordinary quilts from Gee's Bend, Alabama to Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze's iconic picture Washington Crossing Delaware, there's something for everyone.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a timeless classic. What should have been a spectacular birthday year for the museum's 150th anniversary evolved into a rethink of its approach to both diversity and accessibility, including the Met's use of digital space, as noted in the 2021 PBS documentary Inside the Met. The Met, which reopened on March 13, 2021, is displaying its worldwide collection in new surroundings and encouraging modern artists to examine some of its oldest pieces.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is located on the Upper East Side and may be reached by bus, subway, or foot. Drivers may park at the Fifth Avenue and 80th Street parking garage, where charges vary from $23 for an hour to $55 for the day (New York City prices, natch). The Met's bike racks are also located in the parking garage. From May 29 through September 6, cyclists may utilize the museum's bike valet service at the Fifth Avenue plaza at 83rd St. Bicycle valet is provided on weekends from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., as well as on specific holidays, including May 31, July 5, and September 6.

Location: 1000 5th Ave, New York, NY 10028

Website: metmuseum.org

The world's biggest and most significant collection of aviation and space artifacts, including all areas of human flight, is housed at the Smithsonian museum in Washington, DC. It features events, educational activities, talks, and performances that celebrate the American spirit, as well as the creativity, daring, and optimism that have led to victories in the history, science, and technology of flight. The Apollo to the Moon display and the Skylab Orbital Workshop are popular with both children and adults.

The National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution also called the Air and Space Museum, is a museum in Washington, D.C., US. It was established in 1946 as the National Air Museum and opened its main building on the National Mall near L'Enfant Plaza in 1976. In 1861, the Smithsonian Institute's first secretary, Joseph Henry, asked Thaddeus S.C. Lowe to inflate his hot air balloon on the institute's premises. A batch of 20 kites was purchased from the Chinese Imperial Commission in 1876, laying the groundwork for what would become the world's biggest collection of aviation and space artifacts.

Location: Independence Ave SW & 6th St SW, Washington, DC 20024

Website: airandspace.si.edu

The Marfa hysteria immediately makes sense as you step inside the ancient artillery shed, with its massive windows, panoramic desert views, and sun-dappled aluminum boxes. When he built this museum on the site of a former army station, artist Donald Judd single-handedly put Marfa on the map of the art world. One of the world's largest permanent exhibitions of minimalist art is presently housed on the grounds and abandoned buildings.

The entire experience is a stunning mix of art, architecture, and scenery. A guided tour is the greatest method to fully immerse oneself in Judd's work. Tours are now available on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 9 a.m. and 10 a.m., and run for 90 minutes. Tours include a stop at the artillery sheds, which house Judd's 100 unnamed aluminum sculptures. The guided tour also includes stops at his 16 unnamed plywood pieces and the Arena. After the walk, visitors are free to examine Judd's 15 unnamed concrete sculptures on their own. Other artists' works are included on specialty and complete collection tours.

If you don't have time for the guided tour, do the 1.6-mile self-guided journey to see his concrete sculptures. The broad grasses and open areas that surround the empty concrete boxes are essential elements of the performance, and the setting is breathtaking. Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Brueggen's Monument to the Last Horse are also included in the self-guided tour. Self-guided tours cost $15 and guided excursions cost $25.

Location: 1 Cavalry Road, Marfa, TX 79843

Website: chinati.org

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, more popularly known as the Guggenheim, is a world-renowned art museum and one of the twentieth century's most prominent architectural landmarks. The artworks within, which include works by Kandinsky, Picasso, Pollock, Monet, Van Gogh, and Degas, as well as pictures by Mapplethorpe and major surrealist works, are perhaps more famous than the architect Frank Lloyd Wright's conical white spiral. The true appeal, though, is the temporary installations that ascend the much-photographed central Rotunda.

The Guggenheim is a cultural center, a learning institution, and the hub of a global museum network. Special exhibits of modern and contemporary art, artist and critic talks, performances and film screenings, seminars for teenagers and adults, and daily tours of the galleries guided by museum educators are all available to visitors.

Location: 1071 5th Ave, New York, NY 10128

Website: guggenheim.org

When the World Trade Center's twin towers fell during the tragic events of September 11, 2001, it prompted years of soul-searching over what would be a fitting monument to replace these lost icons. The ultimate product was this humbling museum in Lower Manhattan & the Financial District, surrounded by the melancholy reflected pools of the neighboring National September 11 Memorial, offering a touching memorial to those killed in the catastrophe.

The museum is aesthetically fascinating and deeply sad, incorporating portions of the ground destroyed by the collapsed skyscrapers, as well as fragments of the towers themselves. Its artifacts, movies, pictures, and audio recordings offer a thought-provoking and introspective look at the disaster, the circumstances leading up to it (including the 1993 World Trade Center car-bombing), and the tales of loss, perseverance, and hope that followed.

Escalators drop to the museum's basement galleries from the museum's glass entry pavilion, which hauntingly conjures a collapsed tower in memorial to the catastrophe. Visitors stand in the shadow of two 70-foot-high steel structural tridents as they descend below the surface, which was originally placed in the bedrock at the base of the North Tower to help maintain the original construction. These burned survivors, which resemble huge, rusted forks, are just two of the many sad items that bore mute testimony to the September 11 destruction within this haunting museum.

Location: 180 Greenwich St, New York, NY 10007

Website: 911memorial.org

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art expanded in 2016, nearly tripling the institution's capacity to house a massive collection of modern and contemporary masterworks across seven levels of galleries – but then, from its foundation in 1935, SFMOMA has defied limitations.

The SFMOMA championed works by local favorites like Diego Rivera, as well as cutting-edge abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, and Arshile Gorky, who had never had a museum display before. The museum also broadened the definition of fine art by acquiring and displaying works of photography, cinema, and architecture, as well as experimenting with new ways to reach art enthusiasts, such as the popular Art in Your Life television show from the 1950s.

The collection has outgrown its home twice since its inception, first in the War Memorial Building and then at the SoMa facility built by Mario Botta, which opened in 1995. In 2016, the SFMOMA expanded, with additional sections of the museum created by the Norwegian architectural group Snhetta.

Location: 151 3rd St Enter on Howard or Third Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-3107

Website: sfmoma.org

Even without Rocky's famed antics on the east stairs, this gigantic art museum would stand out as Philadelphia's preeminent cultural institution. Before leaving the movies behind and focusing instead on the magnificent pieces of art from Europe, Asia, and the Americas shown in the galleries within, each visitor is allowed to one two-glove salute to the city at the top of the stairwell.

Many sites in Philadelphia are free, but the Philadelphia Museum of Art is well worth the admission cost. Walking inside the massive, column-flanked gateway is like entering an art temple. You can take a whirlwind tour through Asian creativity, from Japan and Korea to the Indian subcontinent, and be transported to other worlds by complete architectural ensembles, including a medieval cloister, Chinese and Indian temples, and a Japanese teahouse, in addition to works by great European masters and modern artists.

The Renaissance, post-impressionism, and French impressionism are particularly well-represented in the painting collection. Renoir's The Large Bathers, Rubens' Prometheus Bound, Picasso's Three Musicians, Turner's The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, and Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky by Benjamin West, which commemorates an event that occurred just a mile away in 1752, are among the highlights.

Location: 2600 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy, Philadelphia, PA 19130

Website: philamuseum.org

The National Museum of African American History and Culture, located in Washington, DC, is dedicated only to the documenting of African American life, history, and culture. Since its inception in 2016, the museum has amassed over 36,000 objects and attracted almost 100,000 visitors.

The museum explains how the diverse African American experience shaped the country, and it aspires to assist all Americans understand how global influences impact their stories, histories, and cultures. In the beautifully planned and dynamically lighted exhibition rooms, artifacts, state-of-the-art interactive exhibitions, site-specific artworks, and engaging informative panels abound.

Following decades of attempts to promote and showcase the accomplishments of African Americans, the National Museum of African American History & Culture was founded by an Act of Congress in 2003. The Smithsonian Institution's 19th and the newest museum opened to the public in September 2016.

Location: 1400 Constitution Ave NW, Washington, DC 20004

Website: nmaahc.si.edu

The galleries of MoMA include a Who's Who of modern-art giants, including Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Rothko, Pollock, and Bourgeois. The museum has gathered a spectacular collection of about 200,000 artworks since its foundation in 1929, representing both the rising creative ideas and movements of the late nineteenth century as well as the ideas bursting through today.

It's New York's Valhalla for art lovers, and an exhilarating crash course on all that is lovely and addicting about art for the uninitiated. It's unsurprising that it's one of the most popular things to do in New York, and the gallery can become rather crowded. A visit early in the morning, before the crowds arrive, is the ideal way to admire the collection in relative solitude.

The gallery grew in size as the collection grew, thanks to fresh gifts, bequests, and purchases, until settling on its current location in 1939. In 1984, architect Cesar Pelli quadrupled the gallery area, and in 2019, a huge remodeling added additional 40,000 square feet (3716 square meters) of gallery space, including the new Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Studio for performance and other experimental work on the fourth floor.

Location: 11 W 53rd St, New York, NY 10019

Website: moma.org

The MSI is the Western Hemisphere's largest scientific museum and a great spot to nerd out. A WWII German U-boat nestled in an underground exhibition, a life-size coal mine pit, and the "Science Storms" exhibit featuring a pretend storm and tsunami are among the highlights. The main structure of the museum functioned as the Palace of Fine Arts during the 1893 World's Fair, which was held in Jackson Park. Level by level, these are some of the museum's top features.

A full-size replica coal mine, the German submarine U-505 seized during World War II, a 3,500-square-foot (330 m2) model railroad, Apollo 8's command module, and the first diesel-powered streamlined stainless-steel passenger train are among the museum's displays (Pioneer Zephyr). In January 2021, Chevy Humphrey was named president and CEO of the private, non-profit museum.

Location: 5700 S Lake Shore Dr, Chicago, IL 60637

Website: msichicago.org

This beautiful Spanish Colonial revival-style palace is located 5 miles north of downtown and was once owned by artist Marion Koogler McNay. Even more impressive is McNay's 700-piece collection of European and American art, which she gave to the city following her death in 1950.

The McNay Art Museum today has a collection of nearly 22,000 works. As you move from room to room, you'll come across gem after treasure, with Van Gogh's Women Crossing the Fields standing out among works by European painters like Picasso, Matisse, Cézanne, Munch, and Rodin. Photographs, sculptures, and paintings by Alexander Calder, Magdalena Abakanowicz, and Joan Mitchell are among the works in the modern and contemporary art collection. There are 19th and 20th-century prints and graphics, as well as medieval artworks. The collection, which spans the Renaissance to the twenty-first century, cannot be presented in its entirety at any given moment.

Location: 6000 N New Braunfels Ave, San Antonio, TX 78209

Website: mcnayart.org

The Denver Art Museum (DAM) houses one of the country's greatest Native American art collections and hosts spectacular multimedia displays ranging from British art treasures to Star Wars outfits. The permanent collection's section on Western American Art is well-known. This isn't your typical art museum, and the greatest part is digging into the interactive exhibitions, which are a hit with youngsters.

The historic $110 million Daniel Libeskind's design for the Frederic C Hamilton wing is remarkable. It's unquestionably an angular contemporary masterpiece, whether you interpret it as expanding crystals, juxtaposed mountains, or plain architectural pleasure.

Look inside if you believe the area seems strange from the outside: owing to a combination of design and strange natural-light trickery, forms vary with each turn. There are numerous play spaces for youngsters on each floor, as well as a treasure hunt and make-your-own-postcard stations.

Location: 100 W 14th Avenue Pkwy, Denver, CO 80204

Website: denverartmuseum.org