Ours Go to 11: Volume 17, My Favorite Art Museums

I love art.

Not just in the wider context of artistic creation, in terms of theater, film, music, etc., but specifically in terms of fine art.

Though the breadth and depth my appreciation has evolved over the years--and continues to--I enjoy art of many styles, eras, genres, countries and levels, from the world's most renowned museums to art fairs and student exhibitions.

On a recent trip to Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia, I explored 11 art museums (and/or sculpture galleries) over just 4 days, and have now visited nearly 160 museums plus a variety of churches, palaces, schools and other places where art is prominently displayed.

I certainly don't have a photographic memory about what paintings, sculptures and other art pieces I've seen and enjoyed at each museum, especially ones I was last at many years ago. So this list is something of an unscientific melange blending my (sometimes vague) recall of the quality of the collections and how much I enjoyed my visit(s)--including for reasons that could go beyond the art itself, such as the building, setting, cost, etc. (Although the art must be pretty incredible to merit inclusion, which is why the Guggenheim Bilbao isn't here despite the amazing architecture by Frank Gehry.)

Museums I've been to more often might naturally feel like favorites, even if their collections are perhaps lesser than those ranked lower or omitted, and those I've been to more recently are also likely to benefit. So it's quite possible this list would be ordered differently at another time, but to be taken with an inevitable grain of salt, these are:

My Favorite Art Museums Visited (not necessarily a "Best of" list) 

1. The Art Institute of Chicago
2. National Gallery, London
3. Pitti Palace, Florence
4. Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia
5. Museum of Modern Art, New York
6. National Gallery, Washington, DC
7. Louvre, Paris
8. Prado, Madrid
9. Detroit Institute of Arts
10. Guggenheim Museum, New York
11. Secretaria de Educación Publico building, Mexico City (Diego Rivera murals)

And several more great ones: 

Cleveland Museum of Art
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia
Tate Modern, London
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Courtauld Gallery, London
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City
Milwaukee Art Museum
Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Getty Center, Los Angeles
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Belvedere, Vienna
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio
Reina Sofia, Madrid
Vatican Museum, Vatican City
St. Louis Museum of Art
Legion of Honor, San Francisco
Picasso Museum, Barcelona
Centre Pompidou, Paris

My Own Private International Art Museum -- Photographs of Paintings: 2003-2014

Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, Louvre Museum, Paris

I love art museums and have been to about 150 worldwide--some several times--plus a good smattering of European churches and palaces, where amazing art is also in abundant supply.

While I am happy that I have gotten to some of the most prestigious museums in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere--including the Met, MOMA, Art Institute of Chicago, MFA Boston, the National Gallery of the U.S. and of England, the Louvre, Musee D'Orsay, Prado, Hermitage, Uffizi, Rijksmuseum, Vatican, Guggenheim in New York and Bilbao, and several more--I have also enjoyed stellar collections in places like St. Louis, Dayton, Des Moines, Madison, Toledo, Mason City, IA, Champaign and even Las Vegas.

Although many art museums don't allow any photography, even of their permanent collections without a flash, several do--and  I've taken photographs of thousands of paintings where permissible.

I'm not really sure why, as most of the paintings I've captured--and many, many more--can readily be found online (I love WikiArt.org and Google Art Project). And it's not as if I've ever shown anyone any of these photos, beyond a few included in blog posts and travel galleries, nor even looked at them much, if at all, myself.

Frank Weston Benson, Sunlight, Indianapolis Museum of Art

But it seemed like a good, or at least time-consuming, idea to post some here. And I can't deny it was fun to look though the 635 gigabytes (that's not a typo, but represents much more than art pix) of photos I have stored on portable hard drives to (re)discover photos of paintings I've long since forgotten having taken--and then trying to find/verify the artists and titles online.

The photos below cover a wide swath of art museums, from major to relatively minor, though only museums visited after I had a digital camera (sometime in 2003) are represented, thereby leaving out anything from Italy and many other places.

The artists include some of my favorites but were selected somewhat randomly, are not meant to be comprehensive and, like the museums, each is represented just once (except the Louvre, from which I included Mona above--photography is now allowed, not that it stopped me when it wasn't--and something else below).

The good number of female portraits shown is also coincidental, and their is no specific intent to showcase any museum's best, most famous or even my favorite painting. (I also like sculpture, photography and other art museum holdings, but have included only paintings.)

These were all taken within permanent collections--special exhibit photography is almost universally forbidden--but it's possible that some paintings below are no longer owned from the museum where I saw and shot them, or that photography guidelines have changed.

Enjoy. But please stay behind the virtual ropes.

Edward Hopper, High Noon, Dayton Art Institute

Unsure of artist/work, thinking perhaps by George Rouault, Denver Art Museum

Amedeo Modigliani, Portrait of a Woman, Detroit Institute of Arts

Pablo Picasso, Weeping Woman, Tate Modern, London