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Philadelphia Museum of Art is the best museum in Philadelphia

The 21 best Philadelphia museums

The City of Brotherly Love is home to an astounding number of cultural offerings: here are the best Philadelphia museums

Josh Middleton

No visit to the City of Brotherly Love is complete until you’ve wandered inside at least a few of the best Philadelphia museums. And, given the diversity we’ve got going on in town, you’ll never have to worry about finding one that you like.  

The Benjamin Franklin Parkway—a work of art in itself—is ground zero when you want to ogle art (and, yes, the Rocky Statue) by the world’s most famous creatives, like Picasso, Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo. Looking for history? Find it in spades in Old City, where the revolutionary era comes alive in a handful of high-tech museums that are fun for grownups and kids alike. The campus of the University of Pennsylvania is also home to a diverse group of destinations—including a couple of underrated gems that are absolutely free to enter.

Feel up on some cheesesteak at the best restaurants in town and then get ready to peruse the city’s top cultural offerings.

RECOMMENDED: Full guide to the best things to do in Philadelphia

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Philadelphia museums

Philadelphia Museum of Art

1.  Philadelphia Museum of Art

  • Art and design
  • Ben Franklin Parkway - Kelly Drive

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is perhaps more widely known for its role in Rocky , but it’s so much more than that. Overlooking the Schuylkill River, this crown jewel on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway wows with a world-class art collection that spans the ages—from medieval relics to seminal Impressionist works and colorful wonders from the Modern era. Its permanent collection boasts masterworks by Picasso, Van Gogh, Brancusi, Kahlo, Duchamp and more, but blockbuster special exhibitions held throughout the year bring in even more pieces of must-see art from around the globe. Your ticket grants you two-day access to PMA, the Rodin Museum, Cedar Grove and the next-door Perelman Building, which holds the art museum’s acclaimed fashion and textile collection and features displays of prints, drawings, photographs and modern design.

Barnes Foundation

2.  Barnes Foundation

  • Greater Philadelphia

Step inside this modern marvel of architectural design to explore the renowned art collection of Albert C. Barnes, a wealthy chemist who made his fortune by inventing a medicine called Argyrol. Barnes amassed one of the world’s leading collections of works by impressionist and modernist masters, including Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Pierre-August Renoir, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Henri Rousseau. With so many noteworthy artists, it’s no wonder that the museum’s 4,000 holdings are worth an estimated $25 billion. Check out the 2013 documentary The Art of the Steal for more on the Barnes’ fascinating backstory.

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

3.  Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

  • Middle City East

You’ll know you’ve found the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) on Broad Street when you spot a 51-foot-high inverted paintbrush and a crashed fighter jet stuck in the pavement. These works, respectively by Claes Oldenburg and PAFA alumnus Jordan Griska, are dramatically installed on the plaza outside the elegant Victorian-era museum and art school that opened in 1805. The destination takes the viewer on a chronologically arranged tour of American art from the 1760s to today, with works by notable art all-stars, such as Benjamin West, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Mary Cassatt, Alice Neel, Jennifer Bartlett, Alex Katz and Frank Stella. That's in addition to an itinerary of well-thought-out special exhibitions happening throughout the year.

Penn Museum

4.  Penn Museum

  • University City

The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, familiarly known as the Penn Museum, houses a staggering one million objects—including art and fascinating relics from far-flung lands, such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, Asia, the Middle East and ancient Greece and Italy. The star of the show is the Egyptian gallery with its 15-ton granite sphinx, ancient hieroglyph-inscribed columns and mummies. The Chinese rotunda, with a soaring ceiling that stretches to 90 feet, houses sculptures and the famous Qing Dynasty 55-pound flawless crystal ball. Wander down hallways and discover treasures in the Etruscan, African, Greek and Canaan galleries that will bring out your inner explorer. Also, don’t miss the spectacular artifacts, jewels and the famed Ram-in-the-Thicket statuette in the newly remodeled Middle Eastern galleries.

Mütter Museum

5.  Mütter Museum

  • Science and technology
  • Center City West

This is invariably the museum that out-of-town guests beg to be taken to when visiting Philadelphia. It houses a curious collection of antique medical oddities, deformed organs floating in jars of formaldehyde, and anatomical specimens and wax models. Get, as the museum touts, “disturbingly informed” as you ogle the 200-year-old conjoined liver of Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker, slices of Albert Einstein’s brain and the famed “Soap Lady,” a woman from around here whose body was exhumed in 1875 after being encased in a bizarre soaplike fatty substance. If that’s not enough to scare you away, maybe the interactive exhibit that lets you experience what it’s like to have your arm amputated will.

Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens

6.  Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens

  • Bainbridge St Booksellers Row

You can’t miss this imaginative museum on South Street, with its facade—and even some surrounding buildings—plastered with bits of colored glass and shards, broken ceramics and even bicycle wheels. The experience continues inside, as you wind your way through mosaicked hallways and step into glistening courtyards. The labyrinthine museum is the product of the insanely creative mind of local artist Isaiah Zagar, who’s gone on to contribute hundreds of mosaics throughout South Philadelphia. See how many you can spot while you’re strolling around the area.

Eastern State Penitentiary

7.  Eastern State Penitentiary

  • Attractions
  • Historic buildings and sites
  • Fairmount District

Once the world’s most expensive prison, Eastern State Penitentiary is now a fascinating museum, charting nearly 150 years of criminal history. The imposing fortress closed its doors in 1971, but not before it held renowned inmates like Al Capone and Slick Willie Sutton, who famously tunneled out of the prison in 1945. Guests are able to walk through the creepy halls and peek into the empty cells, all while listening to a Steve Buscemi-narrated audio guide. If you’re here in the fall—and brave enough—the facility turns into a monstrous haunted attraction called Terror Behind the Walls, which offers multiple haunted experiences and a pop-up bar near Capone’s former holding cell.

Institute of Contemporary Art

8.  Institute of Contemporary Art

The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) is where you go if you want to see ultra-contemporary, experimental works and installations. The compact museum has been mounting exhibitions of works by major contemporary artists since its opening in 1963, when it vowed to bring in what was “new and happening on the art scene.” Andy Warhol presented his first-ever solo museum show here in 1965. Since then, the ICA has added artists like Robert Mapplethorpe, Laurie Anderson, Glenn Ligon, Agnes Martin, Damian Ortega, Pepon Osorio and Lisa Yuskavage to its impressive roster. Another thing: the ICA is absolutely free, so stop in and get your culture fix completely gratis.

Museum of the American Revolution

9.  Museum of the American Revolution

The Museum of the American Revolution is a fun, high-tech addition to the city’s historic offerings—and it’s a blast to explore for kids and adults alike. Located in Old City, where the rumblings of revolution began, the place boasts weaponry displays, interactive experiences and thousands of artifacts from the colonial era—including the tent George Washington used as his headquarters from 1778 to 1783.

National Museum of American Jewish History

10.  National Museum of American Jewish History

Rising dramatically above Independence Mall in Old City, this sharp, modern museum utilizes thousands of artifacts, papers, photos and films to tell the story of being Jewish in America—beginning at the time Jews arrived here in 1654 and moving through the present day. The experience includes creative, interactive exhibits, like a booth where you can record you own story, and famous artifacts from Jews who have made an impact on American life and culture. You can check out a costume Barbra Streisand wore in the cult-fave 1980s musical Yentl , Stephen Spielberg’s first camera and a pipe that once rested on Albert Einstein’s brilliant kisser.

National Constitution Center

11.  National Constitution Center

For better or worse, politics is a hot topic these days—all the more reason to make sure you know your rights. Get started at the National Constitution Center, devoted to telling the story of the U.S. Constitution—which was drafted and signed just across Market Street in Independence Hall. Learning is fun here, with high-tech exhibits—both permanent and temporary—interactive displays and historic artifacts. A display of life-size bronze statues of all 42 of the Constitution signers is great fodder for your Instagram feed, because who wouldn’t like a selfie with a founding father?

Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University

12.  Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University

  • Natural history
  • Parkway Museums

This spot on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway is a no-brainer for kids, with its towering dinosaur skeletons, hands-on fossil digs and animal dioramas, but it’s a must for lovers of natural history as well. Founded in 1812, the Academy of Natural Sciences is home to 18 million plant and animal specimens—both living and long-dead. There are more than 30 dinosaur and Mesozoic reptile species, including a fully constructed Tyrannosaurus rex; an exhibit where you can walk among a myriad of fluttering butterflies from around the world; and a hall filled with dozens of dioramas from the 1930s and ’40s, including Kodiak bears, bison, moosn, zebras, gorillas, tigers and pandas.

The Franklin Institute

13.  The Franklin Institute

  • Logan Square

If your kid can’t find something at this science museum to get excited about, you better check their pulse. Step inside the rotunda to greet a 20-foot-high marble statue of Benjamin Franklin, the museum’s namesake, before zooming in to explore room upon room of fun, interactive exhibits in this historic—and super hands-on—science museum. Permanent exhibitions and attractions include the four-story Foucault’s Pendulum; a giant heart that you can walk through and hear pulsing with blood; the 350-ton Baldwin steam locomotive and the 1948 T-33 Shooting Star jet. While a lot of this is for kids—and kids at heart—adults can find plenty to love in two Escape Rooms, the Fels Planetarium and a host of virtual reality experiences.

Mummers Museum

14.  Mummers Museum

  • Special interest

Venture into South Philly and pay the cheap $5 admission to learn all about one of the city’s most time-honored, kooky traditions: the Philadelphia Mummers. For nearly 120 years, the New Year’s Day Mummers Parade has featured dozens of Mummer troupes made up of men, women and children who wear over-the-top costumes and put on outlandish musical shows for spectators lined up along Broad Street. The Mummers Museum delves deeper into the history of the trend with a colorful collection of costumes, videos and a demonstration on how to do the “Mummers Strut.” Keep in mind the venue is only open Wednesdays through Sundays.

Arthur Ross Gallery

15.  Arthur Ross Gallery

Situated in a gothic Victorian library on the University of Pennsylvania campus, the 2,000-square-foot Arthur Ross Gallery is free and open to the public. Named after the New York investor, philanthropist and Penn graduate who founded it in 1983, the gallery showcases works from Penn’s collection in addition to four major exhibitions each year. The thoughtfully curated shows embrace a variety of cultures and mediums—from photography to painting and sculpture.

African American Museum in Philadelphia

16.  African American Museum in Philadelphia

Learn about African American contributions to culture and art in the U.S. at this modest Old City museum that’s located just a few blocks from Independence Hall. The story unfolds through interactive computer displays, photographs, videos and an impressive lineup of rotating special exhibitions that explore the African American experience through fine art, multimedia storytelling and historic artifacts shipped in from across the country.

Woodmere Art Museum

17.  Woodmere Art Museum

  • St Pauls Church

The trip to Chestnut Hill is totally worth it, if only to spend an afternoon art-peeping at the Woodmere Art Museum. Housed in a charming 19th-century stone mansion, the museum has an easily browsable nine galleries that spotlight Philadelphia art, artists and classic paintings and sculptures from the 6,000-works-strong permanent collection.

Fabric Workshop and Museum

18.  Fabric Workshop and Museum

This contemporary art center just around the corner from Reading Terminal showcases art made with new materials and media. Shows include anything from sculpture to works on fabric to architectural exhibitions and video installations. Another perk? Admission is totally free.

United States Mint

19.  United States Mint

Philadelphia’s mint does not print paper money, but it does stamp coins by the tens of millions per day. The free self-guided tour explains what the process entails from start to finish as well as how it has all changed from earlier days. Along the way, kids will get to design their own virtual coins, try to lift a sack of nickels and see what happens to all the money that falls off the conveyor belts.

Science History Institute

20.  Science History Institute

Catch up on all the lessons you slept through in science class at this Old City museum that was founded to preserve and explore the history of science and teach the indelible impact that it has had on humankind throughout the ages. Step inside to look through one of the most renowned collections of rare books on chemistry, a host of historic scientific instruments and works that merge the worlds of science and modern art.

Fireman’s Hall Museum

21.  Fireman’s Hall Museum

  • Elfreth's Alley

Just outside of Old City, this restored firehouse offers close-up looks at antique fire trucks as well as artifacts rescued from some well-known fire-related events. Upstairs, look through old ship registers and get up close and personal with some of the many antique fire extinguishers on display. This is a free self-guided tour not to miss—especially if you have little ones in tow.

Museum-hopping on a budget?

Check out our guide to the best free things to do in Philly

Check out our guide to the best free things to do in Philly

  • Things to do

Many of the museums on this list offer free or deeply discounted nights throughout the week or month.

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The 13 Best Museums in Philadelphia

By Nancy DePalma

The 13 Best Museums in Philadelphia From Art Galleries to Medical Museums

Liberty and justice, for all. It’s not just a sentiment—it’s a mission statement coursing through the veins of this city, where you can walk in the Founding Fathers’ footsteps at Independence Hall. But there's so much more to the city's story than just the American Revolution. There are world-class art collections at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and at the Barnes; science comes alive at The Franklin Institute and the Science History Museum; rare books enthrall at The Rosenbach in Rittenhouse; and the macabre world of medicine mystifies at The Mütter. Philly is also home to the largest sphinx in the Western hemisphere (at The Penn Museum), so whether you’re an art aficionado, history buff or an armchair sociologist, there’s an institution waiting for you. Read on for the best museums in Philadelphia. 

Read our complete Philadelphia travel guide here.

This gallery has been updated with new information since its original publish date.

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Philadelphia

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Arrow

In a city of firsts, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) was the first art school and museum in the country. The museum's collection is spread across two buildings. First visit the grand, historic building, where you feel like you've stepped back in time—and straight across the Atlantic into Europe. After that, walk outside past Claes Oldenburg's "Paint Torch," an oversized paint brush sculpture, to the contemporary space next door. PAFA isn't on the typical tourist track, instead drawing true art aficionados and intellectuals. Since it's also a highly regarded art school, the museum feels very alive—you get the feeling that many of your fellow perusers may in fact be students polishing their craft. 

United States Pennsylvania Philadelphia Museum Museum of The American Revolution

Museum of the American Revolution Arrow

Standing sentry on a prime corner lot across from Independence National Historic Park , the Robert A.M. Stern-designed Museum of the American Revolution is a must-visit after wandering the historic halls across the street. Just don’t expect the same, tired narrative you were taught in elementary school—this museum takes a different track entirely. Exhibits are honest and raw, eschewing the overwrought, often whitewashed version of events to highlight the overlooked perspectives of Native Americans, African Americans, and women.

African American Museum Philadelphia

The African American Museum in Philadelphia Arrow

Set on a quieter stretch of Arch Street surrounded by federal buildings, the African American Museum has a late-1970s look and feel. The collection focuses on the African American experience from the early Colonial era to the present day. The floors are organized chronologically; the first floor showcases a video installation where historic figures share their experiences as black Philadelphians at the time of the Revolution. Higher floors are reserved for temporary exhibitions. Visitors seek out this museum to better understand African American history and culture. It's often filled with Philadelphia public school students. 

United States Pennsylvania Philadelphia Museum The Rosenbach

The Rosenbach Arrow

Occupying two brownstones in tony Rittenhouse Square , The Rosenbach is a house museum and rare book library with an awe-inspiring collection of British and American literature. The museum was once the private home of the Rosenbach brothers, rare book dealers who curated the libraries of some of America’s most influential families, including the Folgers and Huntingtons. The collection they amassed—now composed of some 400,000 items, ranging from rare books and manuscripts, to pieces of art, decorative objects, and furnishings—is widely considered one of the finest in the country. Between the two libraries on view, which are organized both regionally and chronologically, visitors can get a look at items including the second folio of William Shakespeare’s plays, Bram Stoker’s handwritten notes for Dracula, and the only surviving copy of Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard's Almanac.

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The The Franklin Institute Library in Philadelphia

The Franklin Institute Arrow

The Franklin Institute is like a giant science lab, albeit one with a walk-through model of the heart (claustrophobes, beware). The layout is highly interactive, whether you're stepping on a scale to learn how many pints of blood you have or climbing a webbed trail of nets that mimic the brain's pathways. The museum is almost always packed with excited kids, harried parents, and field trips. It's the domain of elementary and middle school students during the week and families on weekends.

Eastern State Penitentiary Philadelphia

Eastern State Penitentiary Arrow

Eastern State Penitentiary, where crime boss Al Capone famously served time, was once considered the future of America's corrections: It was the most expensive prison constructed and was considered revolutionary. It's impossible to enter without getting the chills. With its imposing Gothic architecture, crumbling walls, and somber history, the building has a haunted feel. Yet it's possible to find beauty within the cracks—there's a reason why it's so photogenic and frequently pulls double-duty as a film location.

United States Pennsylvania Philadelphia Museum Independence National Historic Park

Independence National Historic Park Arrow

Philadelphia is the only UNESCO World Heritage City in the United States precisely because of the historical events that transpired right here, and it’s not just one museum or historic landmark. Rather, it’s a collection of buildings that played host to events that shaped American independence or honor that hard-won heritage. Begin at the Visitor Center to get your bearings and start your tour—visitors can enter with timed entry tickets—at Independence Hall, then stop by the Liberty Bell Center for a look at ostensibly the most famous broken item in the world. Afterwards, wander past the park’s other historic buildings including Carpenters Hall, the meeting site of the first Continental Congress, then make your way to the Benjamin Franklin Museum. Just note the airport-style security (and subsequent foot traffic) you're bound to encounter, and make sure you wear comfortable shoes—you'll be doing a lot of walking.

United States Pennsylvania Philadelphia Museum Science History Institute

Science History Institute Arrow

The Franklin Institute might be Philadelphia's best-known science museum, but the Science History Institute (formerly the Chemical Heritage Foundation) is an insider-favorite. The museum, which pays homage to the actual practice of science and its life-changing discoveries, is located right in the heart of Old City, on the ground floor of the Institute's contemporary glass building. Despite its small size, it completely delivers with a fascinating collection of items, all of which serve to elucidate the mysteries of everyday life—how crayons get their colors, or how plastics are made.

Penn Museum Philadelphia

Penn Museum Arrow

A hidden gem nestled within the University City neighborhood on the University of Pennsylvania campus , the Penn Museum is dedicated to anthropology and archaeology. The collection is comprised of art and artifacts largely discovered by the University's own archaeologists and researchers in the 19th and early-20th centuries. Galleries are organized by geography and culture, and include China and Japan, The Middle East, Egypt, Mexico and Central America, Native Americans, Ancient Rome and Greece, and Ancient Israel. The collection is massive—you could definitely spend hours here, but if you want a quick hit, don't miss the sphinx (the largest in the Western hemisphere).

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Philadelphia Museum of Art Arrow

Classic, grand, and impressive, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is a cultural institution. It is Philadelphia's answer to the Louvre, and houses one of the country's finest collections of art and sculpture. Tourists, locals, the stroller set…the gang's all here and they're all taking in the art at their own pace. Some skip entire galleries based on interests, while others read every placard. It's a choose your own adventure kind of place. And if all of this culture makes you hungry, you're in luck. The Cafe is bright and welcoming and features a variety of tasty sandwiches, soups, pizzas, and more. Prefer to cool your heels in a more formal setting? The Stir is an elegant spot designed by Frank Gehry that's perfect for lingering and lunching.

Barnes Museum Philadelphia

Barnes Foundation Arrow

The Barnes isn't your typical museum. It's essentially a passion project of one man, Dr. Albert Barnes, who amassed a personal collection of more than 3,000 pieces. Originally displayed in a residential setting, the permanent home opened in 2012 on Museum Mile. While the collection is comprehensive (and impressive), the museum maintains an intimacy unlike most others. The permanent collection encompasses a hit list of some of Europe's most famous artists (think Van Gogh, Renoir, Matisse, and Picasso) along with African sculpture, decorative arts, and metalwork. There's nothing traditional or staid about the presentation—paintings are hung in a collage-style grouping interspersed with items that are seemingly out of place. They are displayed exactly as Dr. Barnes enjoyed them, lending a very personal look and feel to the museum.

United States Pennsylvania Philadelphia Museum Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia

The Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia Arrow

The Mütter Museum, housed within a portion of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, can trace its origins back to 1858, when Dr. Thomas Mütter donated his collection of medical models and specimens in an effort to honor medicine’s heritage and celebrate its advancements. The museum's 25,000-item collection, spread between two floors, includes everything from medical instruments and wax models, to bones and anatomical, or “wet,” specimens, all ranging from the fascinating, to the disturbing, to the downright disgusting. A few highlights include a Civil War-era set of amputation instruments, a jar of skin from a patient with a skin-picking disorder, and a giant, desiccated colon that'll have you eating kale for weeks. All gawking aside, it’s a true testament to the study and practice of medicine.

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Insiders’ guide to 22 essential Philadelphia museums

From the city’s greatest hits to lesser known gems, here are 22 must-see museums, even if you’ve lived here your whole life.

One of the best-known museums in the city is the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Philadelphia has come a long way since Pierre Eugène du Simitière opened the nation’s first public museum in 1782 and naturalist Charles Willson Peale went from displaying artifacts in his home to founding the Philadelphia Museum in 1786.

In a town where historical markers, buildings, and neighborhoods abound, Philadelphia’s museum game is stronger than ever. While we’re sure Peale and Simitière never imagined QR code entry tickets or eating avocado toast in a garden between exhibits, our talent at showcasing cool art, history, and culture remains vast.

Help make this guide better

But since we live in the first World Heritage City in America , there’s a lot of options. So we’ve assembled a list with some insider museum tips to help you out, even if you’ve lived here your whole life.

Here are a few places where you can easily spend an afternoon diving into early American history, uncovering the legacy of a world-renowned singer, indulging in great works of art, and even taking some selfies with a dinosaur.

Classic Philly Museums

The academy of natural sciences of drexel university.

Founded in 1812, The Academy of Natural Sciences opened its doors to the public in 1828, becoming the oldest natural science research facility and museum in America. With a scientific collection of more than 18 million specimens, public lectures, classes, and an extensive library, this is a true bridge between global expeditions and research. From the T.rex in Dinosaur Hall to lions in the African and Asian Hall, here you’ll find a showcase of the evolution of people and the natural world.

📍 1900 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy. , 📞 215-299-1000, 🌐 ansp.org , 📷 @acadnatsci , 🎧 audio guided tours, 🎟️ $25 for adults, $2 discounts for purchasing tickets online , and discounted rates for seniors age 65+, military, kids, and students (with ID)

The Academy of Natural Sciences resumes weekly Paleo Playdates for preschoolers, albeit virtually, February 3. Here, the academy's Dinosaur Hall.

African American Museum in Philadelphia

Located just a few blocks from the Liberty Bell and opened as part of the 1976 Bicentennial celebrations, the African American Museum in Philadelphia understands that Black history is American history. With four gallery spaces and a spacious auditorium for lectures and workshops, the museum celebrates African heritage and the lives of foundational Black Americans in Philadelphia’s history. Beyond the 750,000 artifacts in the collection, there are also a ton of family-friendly events, films, concerts, and panel discussions centered on the Black experience.

📍 701 Arch St. , 📞 215-574-0380, 🌐 aampmuseum.org , 📷 @aampmuseum , 🎧 audio guided tours, 🎟️ $14 for adults and discounts for seniors age 65+, kids 4-12, and students (with ID)

American Swedish Historical Museum

Built on a sizable land grant from Queen Christina of Sweden, the American Swedish Museum features 12 galleries that span the history of the 1968 Delaware Valley’s New Sweden Colony (a colony that settled on both sides of the Delaware River from 1638 to 1655 in an effort to colonize America during the Thirty Years War), the country’s history, and the vast contributions of Swedish figures in art, design, literature, and music to the rest of the world. The building’s design is based on Ericsberg Castle, Stockholm’s City Hall, and George Washington’s Mount Vernon home.

📍 1900 Pattison Ave. , 📞 215-389-1776, 🌐 americanswedish.org , 📷 @americanswedish , 🎟️ $10 for adults and discounts for seniors age 65+, military, and kids 5-11

The Barnes Foundation

The Barnes Foundation

What started with Albert C. Barnes’ passion for collecting and teaching others how to view art, has blossomed into an institution with more than 4,000 objects on display, including the works of Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso, and Greek antiquities, African art, Indigenous art, and other one-of-a-kind collections. The building also features a 150-seat auditorium, a conservation and research lab, classrooms, a restaurant , and a beautiful reflecting pool near the entrance.

📍 2025 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy. , 📞 215-278-7000, 🌐 barnesfoundation.org , 📷 @barnesfoundation , 🎧 app guided tours , 🎟️ $25 for adults and discounts for seniors age 65+, military, kids, students (with ID), and free on the first Sunday of the month, 🍽 restaurant on-site

Eastern State Penitentiary

Designated a U.S. National Landmark, Fairmount’s Eastern State Penitentiary has housed some of the country’s most notorious criminals such as Joe Bruno, Al Capone, and Willie Sutton. Opened in 1829 and known for its design, it later became a model for over 300 prisons worldwide. Beyond walking around the wheel-likebuilsing and the seven cell blocks fanning out of the center, visitors can learn from permanent exhibits like The Big Graph, Prisons Today, Hidden Lives Illuminated, Jewish Life, Al Capone’s Cell, and Murals of the Chaplain’s Office. Night tours are also available.

📍 2027 Fairmount Ave. , 📞 215-236-3300, 🌐 easternstate.org , 📷 @easternstate ,🎧 audio guided tours, 🎟️ $21 for adults and discounts for seniors age 65+, military, kids, and students (with ID), 🍽 beer garden on-site

Part of the Franklin Institute's exhibit "Crayola IDEAworks: The Creativity Exhibition" where students from Independence Charter School West colored in a portion of the 6,500 square foot drawing created by their art teacher Dyymond Whipper-Young.

The Franklin Institute

Named after inventor and Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, The Franklin Institute is a hub for science and technology education. Along with 10 permanent exhibitions spanning from electricity to anatomy, the museum also has a large collection of objects from the Wright brothers’ workshop.

📍 222 N. 20th St. , 📞 215-448-1200, 🌐 fi.edu , 📷 @franklininstitute , 🎧 audio guided tours, 🎟️ $25 for adults and discounts for seniors age 65+, military, and kids, 🍽 café and restaurant on-site

Independence Seaport Museum

The Independence Seaport Museum was founded in 1961 and ever since it has continued its ongoing mission to discover and illustrate Philadelphia’s maritime history and connections. It holds one of the largest maritime art and artifact collections in North America, features several permanent exhibits, and offers fun water excursions like kayaking . Its biggest on-the-water offerings are the Cruiser Olympia, the oldest floating steel warship that is docked nearby, and the Submarine Becuna , a World War II-era Balao-class submarine.

📍 211 S. Columbus Blvd. , 📞 215-413-8655, 🌐 phillyseaport.org , 📷 @phillyseaport , 🎧 audio guided tours, 🎟️ $18 for discounts for seniors age 65+, and kids

Brenda Parker, a historical interpreter, speaks to visitors at the Museum of the American Revolution.

Museum of the American Revolution

One of the city’s newer museums, the Museum of the American Revolution opened its doors in 2017 on the 242nd anniversary of the first battles of the war at Lexington and Concord. Home to artwork, weapons, art, textiles, books, and other artifacts from that time in history, the museum uses its galleries and interactive visuals to highlight the events surrounding America’s quest for liberty and freedom. General admission tickets to the museum are valid for two consecutive days. So if you miss something on your first visit or if there’s something you want to explore more deeply, you can come back.

📍 101 S. Third St. , 📞 215-253-6731, 🌐 amrevmuseum.org , 📷 @amrevmuseum , 🎧 audio guided tours, 🎟️ $21 for adults and discounts for seniors age 65+, military, kids, and students (with ID), 🍽 café on-site

The Mütter Museum

The Mütter Museum

The Mütter Museum was established in 1858 by physician Thomas Dent Mütter for the purposes of biomedical research and education. A part of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, there are more than 20,000 specimens in the institution ranging from skeletal and pathological specimens, wax models, and traditional medical instruments. Keeping up with the times, the Mütter Museum also has its own medical history podcast, My Favorite Malady .

📍 19 S. 22nd St. , 📞 215-560-8564, 🌐 muttermuseum.org , 📷 @muttermuseum , 🎟️ $20 for adults and discounts for seniors age 65+, military, kids, and students (with ID)

National Constitution Center

Nearby Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, The National Constitution Center was added to Independence Mall on the 213th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution on September 17, 2000. Though it does not house the actual constitution, it’s got engaging exhibits that celebrate one of the nation’s founding documents.

📍 525 Arch St., 📞 215-409-6700, 🌐 constitutioncenter.org , 📷 @constitutionctr , 🎟️ $14.50 for adults and discounts for seniors age 65+, military, kids, and students (with ID), 🍽 café on-site

National Museum of American Jewish History

The National Museum of American Jewish History started welcoming visitors in 1976 and originally shared its building with the Congregation Mikveh Israel in Old City. The museum’s educational programs, lectures, films, family days, musical events, and panel discussions all shine a light on the history of Jews in America. With more than 30,000 objects, it holds the largest collection of Jewish Americana in the world including an 1881 Hanukkah lamp from Lodz, Poland, an 1820 Tzedakah (charity) box or Kupat Tzedakah made of silver, and an 1890 brass Hanukkah menorah from Russia, and antique Kiddush cups.

📍 101 S. Independence Mall E. , 📞 215-923-3811, 🌐 nmajh.org , 📷 @weitzmanmuseum , 🎟️ Admission Free with recommended donation of $15

On Thursday at 10 a.m., the Penn Museum hosts a virtual tour of its new Egypt Galleries as part of Wawa Welcome America.

Penn Museum

Part of the University of Pennsylvania, the Penn Museum is an archaeology and anthropology museum with grounds that feature gardens, a rotunda, a fountain, a reflecting pool, and more. Founded in 1887, the museum houses more than a million objects like Bangongo tribal masks, an Apalaii Headdress, and an Asian collection with objects from an expedition to India from 1915 to 1918, with some of the earliest Indian art in America. Explore extensive artifacts from Africa, Mexico, China, Egypt, and beyond, designed to illustrate connections between cultures, and remember civilizations and tribes long gone.

📍 3260 South St. , 📞 215-898-4000, 🌐 penn.museum , 📷 @pennmuseum , 🎟️ $18 for adults and discounts for seniors age 65+, military, kids, and students (with ID), 🍽 café on-site

The Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Philadelphia Museum of Art was originally commissioned in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Opened in 1928, the building now houses more than 240,000 pieces from around the world. It’s also home to two of the most sought-after tourist attractions in the city: the Rocky steps and statue. Besides the main building, there are several annex museums like the Rodin Museum , which has one of the largest holdings of the French sculptor’s works outside of Paris.

📍 2600 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy. , 📞 215-763-8100, 🌐 philamuseum.org , 📷 @philamuseum , 🎧 audio guided tours, 🎟️ $25 for adults and discounts for seniors age 65+, military, kids, students (with ID), and pay-what-you-wish on the first Sunday of the month, 🍽 café and restaurant on-site

Lesser-Known Museums

An exhibition at the Asian Arts Initiative building.

Asian Arts Initiative

Located inside a former Warner Bros. theater, the Asian Arts Initiative is a community-based arts center and nonprofit organization in Chinatown. It was founded in 1993 from a program at the Painted Bride Art Center in response to racial tensions and a need to promote understanding of Asian-American culture and experiences. It works to amplify underrepresented artists through rotating exhibitions, film screenings, live concerts, youth workshops, panel discussions, and open-mic nights.

📍 1219 Vine St. , 📞 215-557-0455, 🌐 asianartsinitiative.org , 📷 @asianartsphilly , 🎟️ Gallery admission is free

The second floor bedroom curated by Syretta Scott in The Colored Girls Museum.

The Colored Girls Museum

Founded by Vashti DuBois, The Colored Girls Museum is a collective of art, books, jewelry, collectibles, sounds, and other objects that encapsulate the everyday experiences of Black and Brown girls. Following the tradition within the Black community to use a home space as one for organizing, the museum is equal parts research facility, gallery space, community area, meditation center, and workshop. Located in a three-story and 130-year-old Victorian house in Germantown, the museum is dedicated to honoring the ordinary and extraordinary lives of women of color through art and preservation of relics.

📍 4613 Newhall St. , 📞 215-251-1653, 🌐 thecoloredgirlsmuseum.com , 📷 @thecoloredgirlsmuseum , 🎟️ $20 suggested donation for adults, $10 suggested donation for students

The Fabric Workshop and Museum

Established in 1977, the Fabric Workshop and Museum is a workspace and contemporary art museum that features exhibits ranging from abstract pieces outlining the history of art to dynamic canvas work. The museum also cultivates and encourages new artists with its artist-in-residence program, as well as a high school, college, and postgraduate apprentice training program, family workshops, and studio tours.

📍 1214 Arch St. , 📞 215-561-8881, 🌐 fabricworkshopandmuseum.org , 📷 @fabricworkshop , 🎟️ Free admission with a $5 suggested donation

Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion, part of Germantown's historic draw.

Historic Germantown

To explore freedom’s backyard, head to Historic Germantown. With 18 historic houses like the Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion and Cliveden , museums like the Lest We Forget Slavery Museum , and historic sites like Hood Cemetery in the collective, interesting stories of abolition, settlement, industry, and the past are all around.

📍Throughout Germantown, 📞 215-844-1683, 🌐 freedomsbackyard.com , 📷 @historic_germantown

Blanche Burton-Lyles, founder of the Marian Anderson Historical Society, plays piano at the Marian Anderson Residence and Museum as Cheryl Gay listens.

Marian Anderson Historical Society & Museum

Purchased in 1924, this became the home of the first Black singer to perform at the White House and also the first Black person to sing with New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Marian Anderson called this residence her home until 1943. The museum preserves her legacy through artifacts, photography, and more. It’s also the hub for the Marian Anderson Scholar Artist Program which develops and sponsors artists, classical and opera singers, and musicians. The artists, ranging from 18 to 45, perform seasonally at events that the society sponsors yearly. They also perform around the world. Due to a recent flood, the Museum is currently operating virtually, with hopes to re-open again soon. To support the restoration process, go online or call 215-779-4219 to donate.

📍 762 Martin St. , 📞 215-779-4219, 🌐 marianandersonhistoricalsociety.weebly.com , 📷 @marianandersonhistoricalsociety , 🎟️ $10 for adults and discounts for groups

The Rosenbach

The Rosenbach spans two 19th-century townhouses near Rittenhouse Square, and houses the collections of Philip Rosenbach and his younger brother Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach, both predominant dealers of rare books and manuscripts during the first half of the 20th century. After joining with the Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation in December 2013, the Rosenbach collection has now grown to more than 130,000 manuscripts and 30,000 rare books including the works of Bram Stoker, Lewis Carroll, Phillis Wheatley, Miguel de Cervantes, Charles Dickens, Mercedes de Acosta, and others.

📍 2008-210 Delancey Pl. , 📞 215-732-1600, 🌐 rosenbach.org , 📷 @therosenbach , 🎟️ $12.50 for adults and discounts for seniors age 65+, military, and students (with ID)

Osain, espí­ritu del bosque africano, Spirit of the African Forest, by Samuel Lind at Taller Puertorriqueño in 2019.

Taller Puertorriqueño

Taller Puertorriqueño is a community-based organization that develops, promotes, and conserves Puerto Rican and Latino art and culture. Open since 1974, the center exhibits art, creates cultural programming, has live music performances, hosts author literary talks, screens films, and holds after-school education with a singular mission to foster community empowerment.

📍 2600 N. 5th St. , 📞 215-426-3311, 🌐 tallerpr.org , 📷 @tallerpr , 🎟️ Free admission

Skeleton of an English draft horse in the 19th century exhibition hall of the Wagner Free Institute of Science.

Wagner Free Institute of Science

Go here to get a real glimpse at a Victorian-era science museum. A National Historic Landmark, the Wagner Free Institute of Science opened in 1855 and was designed by John McArthur Jr., the architect who mapped-out City Hall. The renowned natural history museum also functions as a research center, library, and educational facility. The museum maintains more than 100,000 specimens like Chinese pangolins, the Jurassic fish lizard-like creature Ichthyosaurus intermedius, Asian and African elephant skulls, two-toed sloths, and more. The exhibit hall still retains its 19th-century style, with objects displayed in cherry wood and glass cabinets from the 1880s.

📍 1700 W. Montgomery Ave. , 📞 215-763-6529, 🌐 wagnerfreeinstitute.org , @wagnerfreeinst , 🎟️ Free at checkout)

A piece by Alison Saar, called Hygiea, at PAFA in Philadelphia, Pa., on Friday, March 24, 2023.

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

Established in 1805, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is considered to be the nation’s first school and museum of fine arts. Despite being best known for its 19th and 20th-century paintings and sculptures, which are currently not in view, the museum also houses contemporary exhibitions, like “ Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America. ” If you stop by the Historic Landmark Building, you can view work by living artists interpreting the question “ Is the sun rising or setting on the experiment of American democracy ?”

Highlight : ”As soon as you arrive at PAFA you are struck by Claes Oldenburg’ Paint Torch , an iconic sight on North Broad Street, and the majestic beauty of the Frank Furness building, a wonderfully detailed and intricate work of art in and of itself. Visible in the window of the Hamilton Building next door is Hank Willis Thomas’ All Power to All People , the giant Afro pick originally on display in Thomas Paine Plaza. Don’t miss the Lenka Clayton installation, The Story of a Stone , which uses works from PAFA’s permanent collection to tell the story of long ago sculpture transformed into a unique, modern-day duck.” Eric Pryor, President and CEO, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

📍118-128 N. Broad St., 📞215-972-7600, 🌐 pafa.org , @pafamuseum , 🎟️ $18.

Read more museum guides

Insider’s guide to 19 essential museums just outside Philadelphia

13 museums and cultural landmarks that showcase Black history in Philadelphia

Michelle Myers and Steven White contributed reporting to this article.

» READ MORE: Live your best life in Philly: Read our most useful stories here

art museum to visit in philadelphia

15 Best Museums in Philadelphia

For art and history lovers, there's truly nothing like spending the day exploring museums, and Philadelphia museums are among the greatest and most renowned in the country, if not the world, thanks to the City of Brotherly Love's rich history and art culture. With dozens of amazing exhibits and collections to check out, you can find museums across the city dedicated to vastly different niches — from classic automobiles to medical mysteries to the nation's founding and history.

Discover the 15 best museums in Philadelphia, and find out for yourself why Lonely Planet has named Philadelphia the 5th best city in the world to visit and 1st in the U.S.; USA Today readers gave Philly the top spot for walkability in the U.S. noting the city’s cultural and historical attractions; and travel magazine Afar listed Philadelphia as one of the top 25 places in the world to visit in 2024, particularly noting upcoming exhibitions at the Rodin Museum and Philadelphia Museum of Art.

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Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) has a remarkable history as the first art school and museum in the U.S. Today, the museum showcases innovative collections and exhibits of American art, highlighting the work of renowned regional talent and featuring an outstanding permanent collection.

Among its outstanding, 16,000-piece permanent collection, you’ll find 18th- and 19th-century masterpieces by greats including Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, and Mary Cassatt. No worries if your taste runs to works by 20th and 21st century artists. Their collection also features the art of several modern/contemporary artists including Charles Demuth, Mickalene Thomas, Andy Warhol, and Kehinde Wiley.

The academy is located in the heart of Philly, at 118-128 North Broad Street, just blocks from Philadelphia City Hall. If you enjoy getting the nitty gritty details when exploring an art collection, you can request a reservation for private tours from their dedicated and knowledgeable staff.

The PAFA museum is closed Monday through Wednesday every week. On Thursdays and Fridays, doors are open from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. Weekend hours shift slightly, and the museum is open from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m.

Museum of the American Revolution

little girl picking up a fish from bucket

The Museum of the American Revolution offers an immersive look into our country's unique history with walking and guided tours, living history demos, and the hands-on, family-friendly discovery center, Revolution Place. It's an excellent day trip for students just beginning to learn about the American Revolution, but also for history buffs, art enthusiasts, and scholars. The museum's extensive collections include:

  • Personal artifacts of leaders of the revolution, soldiers, and civilians.
  • Late 1700's weapons including muskets, swords, and other armaments.
  • Art from the era depicting key battles, as well as portraits and posters.
  • Rare documents including manuscripts, newspapers, and books.

This museum is conveniently located near Penn's Landing in the eastern portion of the city at 101 South Third Street. Visitors can enjoy special events, including classes and hands-on workshops, and the newest exhibits. Regardless of when you visit the Museum of the American Revolution, you'll leave with a deeper and more meaningful appreciation of the hardships endured and the incredible bravery of both soldiers and civilians and the devoted leaders who founded this nation.

The Museum of the American Revolution is open daily from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. To fuel your visit, enjoy a warm coffee and light snack at the museum's Cross Keys Cafe.

The African American Museum in Philadelphia

a girl holding flag

The African American Museum in Philadelphia tells the story of the African American experience in Philadelphia and the U.S. over the past several centuries. The museum’s impressive collection of art, artifacts, and memorabilia document the remarkable history, heritage, and culture of African Americans and people of the African Diaspora through four galleries of exhibits.

The permanent collection is organized chronologically so visitors can walk through the Black experience from America's pre-Colonial days through the Civil Rights movement with a key focus on family life, and the impact African Americans have had on the arts and entertainment, sports, medicine, architecture, politics, religion, law, and technology.

You can find The African American Museum at the corner of 7th and Arch Street. That's just a stone's throw from Franklin Square and the National Constitution Center in the city's Historic District.

The museum is open Thursday through Sunday from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Before you go, they ask that you reserve one of the following four time slots to visit:

  • 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
  • 12 p.m. to 1:15 p.m.
  • 1:45 p.m. to 3 p.m.
  • 3:30 p.m. to 4:45 p.m.

The Franklin Institute

franklin institute building

Have kids who love science and/or looking for the premiere technology and science museum in Philadelphia? With three stories of interactive, hands-on exhibits, a planetarium on the first floor, and an observatory on the roof, The Franklin Institute is your must-visit, science-y destination.

Be sure to visit the "heart" of the museum — literally. The iconic, two-story-high Giant Heart walkthrough exhibit has been educating visitors about the human heart and public health issues for more than 50 years. It even features sounds of a real human heartbeat so you can see if your heartbeats are in synch with the display.

You can explore the museum solo or register as a group. Be sure to sign up for the fun and impressive live science demonstrations, such as their liquid air or combustion shows, making the museum the ideal spot for families and friends to enjoy together.

The Franklin Institute is located at 222 North 20th Street and takes up an entire city block. Visit any day of the week from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a convenient, designated parking garage right off North 21st Street.

The Rosenbach Museum & Library

The Rosenbach is among the most treasured museums in the Philadelphia area. Its stunning collection of rare art , furniture, and manuscripts will transport you to a different time. And for all the big readers out there, its renowned research library is home to hundreds of rare books you can peruse to your heart's content. Literature lovers, keep your eyes peeled for collections that include works by Bram Stoker, Lewis Carroll, and Charles Dickens.

Founded in 1954 by renowned fine art and book dealers Dr. A.S.W. and Philip Rosenbach, The Rosenbach is situated in a row of historic 19th-century townhomes. You'll find the beautiful brick building at 2008-2010 Delancey Place in Center City West, just a few blocks away from Rittenhouse Square.

The Rosenbach is open Thursday through Saturday, 10:30 a.m. until 6 p.m. Their Sunday hours are shortened by just an hour and a half, opening at 10:30 a.m. and closing at 4:30 p.m. Visitors are strongly encouraged to pre-register for timed tickets online.

Please Touch Museum

little girl looking at art collection

If you're looking for cool museums in Philadelphia that are kid-friendly and interactive, you've got to check out the Please Touch Museum . While other institutions discourage and often prohibit visitors from getting too close to the displays, the Please Touch Museum encourages kids to get physical and interact with nearly everything on display.

In addition to three separate toddler zones, kids can have fun exploring these interactive exhibit zones at the Please Touch Museum:

  • Roadside Attractions
  • Flight Fantasy
  • City Capers
  • Wonderland Centennial Exploration
  • River Adventures

The museum is located in Memorial Hall at 4231 Avenue of the Republic in Fairmount Park near the Schuylkill River. You can tour on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 9 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. Sunday hours are shortened to 11 a.m. through 4:30 p.m. You can reserve your spot online for children older than one year.

Eastern State Penitentiary

With crumbling cellblocks and empty guard towers, the nearly two-century-old Eastern State Penitentiary is one of the most haunting and memorable museums in Philadelphia. About 85,000 people were imprisoned behind its walls before it closed in 1970 — some famous, some infamous, but most whose names are lost to history.

Visitors can explore the remnants of this empty, haunting world of grand architecture and America's most historic prison by taking a daytime tour where you can see gangster Al Capone's furnished cell during his eight-month stay at the prison, complete with fine furniture, oriental rugs, and cabinet radio. For a truly creepy, fright-filled, and fun evening experience, you can visit Eastern State Penitentiary for their Halloween Nights experience in October.

You can find Eastern State Penitentiary at 2027 Fairmount Avenue. Visitors can tour Eastern State daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Independence Hall

No trip to Philadelphia is complete without touring Independence Hall , a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This beacon of freedom for the world and icon of American democracy is where the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution were drafted, debated, and signed by the nation's Founding Fathers.

The key stop on the half-hour tour is the Assembly Room where all the action in the nation’s founding took place. The room is set up just as it was in 1776 (or as close as historians have surmised), complete with George Washington’s famous “Rising Sun” chair.

There are a few things to know before you go. Unless you’re touring the building in January or February, you’ll need to present a timed ticket obtained beforehand . The tickets are free, but there is a $1 handling charge. You can print your tickets or have a digital copy ready on your phone. It's also a good idea to arrive about 30 minutes before your tour because everyone is required to go through a security screening.

You can find Independence Hall at 520 Chestnut Street, between 5th and 6th Streets, in Philadelphia. It is open for daily tours from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. Tours last about 20 minutes, so Independence Hall is a fantastic place to explore if you have limited time in the city.

Science History Institute

If you are a chemistry or engineering enthusiast looking for fun museums in Philadelphia, you'll marvel at the hidden circumstances of some of the most important moments of discovery at the Science History Institute Museum and Library , which shines a spotlight on overlooked stories of scientific innovations. Fine art, instruments, artifacts, and an oversized mass spectrometer are just a few of the items you can expect to uncover. You can also access preserved documents and photographs of significant individuals throughout scientific history.

This museum is not just for adult science enthusiasts. Kids will also enjoy an afternoon exploring a wide range of scientific concepts, from vaccinations to rare elements. Visit the museum on Saturday for a family-friendly program that highlights the many strange and surprising stories from the history of science, with fun, interactive activities designed for science lovers of all ages.

The Science History Institute is located at 315 Chesnut Street on the eastern side of Philly. Admission is free for all visitors. You can tour the museum Wednesday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Most visitors spend about an hour or two, exploring the permanent and rotating exhibits.

Philadelphia Museum of Art

two people looking at a card

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is among the very best Philadelphia museums. From its iconic “Rocky” steps to its 200 galleries housing the museum’s remarkable collection of masterpieces, the museum will delight art lovers and those who simply enjoy looking at pretty (amazing) pictures. The building itself is a treat to experience as one of Philadelphia’s major landmarks.

The museum’s collections feature the works of artists from throughout the world and range from the “old masters” to today’s contemporary artists, with African and African Diasporic art one of their newest collections. The tens of thousands of objects that comprise their collections include sculptures, textiles (including Grace Kelly’s royal wedding dress) and other decorative arts, prints, drawings, and photographs.

You can find the main building at 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway near the Schuylkill River in downtown Philly and visit the museum anytime between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. on Mondays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Visitors can enjoy a pay-what-you-wish admission on Friday nights and the first Sunday of each month.

Mütter Museum

The Mütter Museum at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia is not for the faint of heart. Its exhibits are the most novel and mesmerizing of the downtown Philly museums. If you are deeply interested in anatomy and medical history (and have a strong stomach), this is the destination for you.

With the tagline "disturbingly informative," you can probably guess the museum showcases a wide range of astonishing but sometimes hard-to-look-at medical artifacts. You can expect to see real human body parts, anatomical marvels, and shocking medical instruments from the “dark ages” of medicine.

You can find the Mütter Museum in the heart of Philly at 19 South 22nd Street. They are open Wednesday through Monday, from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Visitors can also visit the Historical Medical Library on the weekends with the same operational hours.

Barnes Foundation

The Barnes Foundation is one of the best museums in Philly for European art lovers. Their impressive collection of paintings includes multiple works by some of the world's most famous and renowned painters. Even people who aren't typically "wowed" by museums will likely find themselves breathless seeing art by Renoir, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Matisse, Modigliani, and Picasso!

It is worth the trip just to see the unique way the artwork is displayed. Unlike most museums where art is labeled and displayed by artist, genre, or time period, the works at the Barnes Foundation are arranged in ensembles that emphasize visual relationships between light, color, lines, and space. Here you are likely to see a work by one of the great masters hung alongside African masks, native American jewelry, Greek antiquities, or decorative metalwork, just as the museum’s founder, Dr. Albert C. Barnes, visualized.

To get the most out of your visit, plan to take one of their guided tours or use your smartphone and their mobile gallery guide, Barnes Focus, to learn more about a specific piece of art on your own.

You can find this museum located at 2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway in the heart of Philadelphia, just a three-minute walk from The Franklin Institute. The Barnes Foundation opens its doors Thursday through Monday, from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m. Members who pay an annual fee can enjoy early members-only access from 10 a.m. until 11 a.m. along with other member benefits.

National Constitution Center

The National Constitution Center is one of the best Philly museums for history buffs and those interested in the U.S. Constitution and how it has influenced, informed, and guided the nation for more than two and a half centuries. Here, you can take a deep dive into the nation’s founding and history with rare artifacts and manuscripts to peruse and the live performance, Freedom Rising, described as "the best 17-minute civics lesson in the country" and the perfect place to start your museum experience.

Be sure to visit Signers Hall with its 42 life-size bronze statues of America's Founding Fathers. The statues recreate the final day of the Constitutional Convention with each statue in a life-like pose. There is also a display dedicated to Alexander Hamilton — perfect for all the "Hamilton" fans among us. You can grab a snack or lunch from a variety of on-site options, including a coffee shop and a few cafes.

The National Constitution Center is located at 525 Arch Street on the eastern side of Philadelphia. They are open Wednesday through Sunday, from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m.

The Academy of Natural Sciences

If you love learning about wildlife and the marvels of the natural world, The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University is one of the best museums in Philly. Consider this museum your window into the wilderness. Many of their exhibits are kid-friendly and highly interactive, bringing science to life and sparking meaningful conversations.

There is so much to do at The Academy of Natural Sciences . You can tour a room with massive dinosaur skeletons or explore a display to help you visualize the wild food chain. On weekends, kids can become amateur paleontologists with fossil brush in hand to dig for dinosaur bones at The Big Dig.

The Academy of Natural Sciences is located near Logan Square at 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia and just a five-minute walk to the Franklin Institute and a six-minute walk to the Barnes Foundation. The museum is open Wednesday through Friday, starting at 10 a.m. until 4:30 p.m., with weekend hours from 10 a.m. through 5 p.m.

Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum

photo of a vintage car dashboard

If you ever wanted to peer inside a super-high-performance Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Bugatti, Mercedes, Jaguar, Bentley, Porsche, Aston Martin, Corvette, Ford, or other of the world’s greatest racing cars, a visit to the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum clearly should be at the top on your “must-visit” and lifetime bucket list.

With the theme "The Spirit of Competition,” they are passionately devoted to preserving and showcasing the evolution of these “magnificent machines.” Organized largely by race course to show how competition has led to substantial improvements in car design and performance, many of the 75 cars in their outstanding collection have appeared in at least one race, with the earliest a 1907 Renault 35/45 Vanderbilt Racer and 16 cars that have raced at Le Mans.

Located at 6825 Norwitch Drive in South Philly near the Philadelphia Airport in a former engine manufacturing plant, the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum is also home to one of the largest specialized collections of automotive books, periodicals, and photographs in their research library.

The museum and its accompanying library are open Tuesday through Friday, from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m., and Saturday through Sunday, from 10 a.m. through 4 p.m. They also host Demo Day on two Saturdays each month, from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. where you can see high-value classic cars in action. It may make the perfect Father's Day excursion!

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Local Highlights

Philadelphia Art Museums: A Comprehensive Guide

  • The Common Team
  • Posted on October 7, 2020
  • Updated on March 1, 2023

We have good news for fans of the arts. There’s no shortage of Philadelphia art museums

When you think of things to do in the City of Brotherly Love, what comes to mind? If you said checking out the Philadelphia museum scene, we couldn’t agree more. The city offers great museums to help visitors learn more about history, including the Museum of the American Revolution and the National Museum of American Jewish History . However, many Philadelphia art museums truly shine in this world-famous city. You can also find coliving apartments in Philadelphia nearby some of these incredible art museums. 

Because the city has so many amazing art museums, you might be feeling overwhelmed when it comes time to decide which ones to visit. To help you make your art museum itinerary, check out this list of the best Philadelphia art museums. Many of these museums have free admission offerings, but check their website before making plans. 

art museum to visit in philadelphia

The Barnes is one of the best Philadelphia art museums

Do you love nineteenth- and twentieth-century French painting? If so, you should take a trip to the Barnes on Benjamin Franklin Parkway, which is home to one of the finest collections of masterpieces by Cezanne, Matisse, and Renoir. You won’t find a collection quite like this one anywhere else, so you’ll want to dedicate several hours of your day to make it through all the amazing works of art in the museum. As a visitor, you can spend hours marveling at the museum’s collection of French paintings. 

The museum proudly focuses on impressionist, post-impressionist, and early modernist paintings. However, it also offers important pieces from other cultures and artistic mediums. For example, it is home to African American artwork, Native American pottery and jewelry, Pennsylvania German furniture, metalwork, and American avant-garde painting. Basically, there’s something to please just about anyone who visits the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This is one of the largest art museums in Philly and can give you a taste of modern art as well as classical art.

In addition to being an art museum, the Barnes Foundation is also an educational institution. As an educational institution, the Barnes Foundation also has several new exhibit options throughout the year. This is great news if you want to dive deeper because the Barnes offers classes. Before COVID-19, the institution offered these classes in its galleries and arboretum, but now the Barnes Foundation presents them online. This new format does more than help protect students from the coronavirus, it also allows people to participate from anywhere in the world. A virtual tour of a current exhibit may also be available. 

art museum to visit in philadelphia

The Philadelphia Museum of Art features one of the best collections in the United States

Known as the cultural heart of Philadelphia, this world-famous cultural institution houses one of the most outstanding art collections in the nation. The collection spans famous works from the Americas, Asia, and Europe, and it boasts masterpieces like van Gogh’s Sunflowers and the only Rodin Museum outside of France. To take it all in, be sure to set aside at least two hours to visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art on Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

No matter when you visit the museum, you’ll find something new to discover. The space features an impressive permanent collection in its 200+ galleries that include breathtaking architectural spaces and period rooms. To keep visitors coming back for more, the Philadelphia Museum of Art also continually offers world-class exhibition selections from different creative minds.

If you want to snag a souvenir, you can peruse the massive collection of art books and other goodies at the museum store. When your stomach starts rumbling, you can make your way to one of the cafes to enjoy delicious eats from the Constellation Culinary. Or you can check out Stir, the East Coast’s only Frank Gehry-designed restaurant, to enjoy the incredible ambiance with your meal.

Are you planning to bring kiddos with you to visit? That’s no problem because the Philadelphia Museum of Art offers free admission for visitors under 18 and hosts many kid-friendly programs throughout the year.

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Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art combines art and culture

If you’re interested in art that illuminates the Jewish experience, the Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art is for you. Featuring contemporary art that reflects Jewish themes, this art museum has been housed inside the historic Congregation Rodeph Shalom since 1975. This is the perfect opportunity to see stunning pieces that will help you learn more about Jewish culture and issues in today’s world. We recommend a guided tour to maximize your learning experience at this cultural institution. 

This space might not be as big as some of the other Philadelphia art museums on this list, but it’s still worth a visit. This art museum features both a permanent collection and a special exhibit gallery. The permanent collection displays artwork in many mediums from diverse artists, including Tobi Kahn, Chaim Gross, and Siona Benjamin. As for the special exhibits, you never know who might be showing their work, so you’ll want to keep checking back.

art museum to visit in philadelphia

Check out the Institute of Contemporary Art on your tour of Philadelphia art museums

Does contemporary art appeal to you more than traditional paintings and sculptures? If so, you’ll want to make your way to the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Philadelphia on 36th Street. Since 1963, this institution has believed in the power of art and artists to inform and inspire people in the world around them. To help the masses enjoy art, the ICA is free to everyone who wants to visit and experience what’s “new and happening” in art.

This art museum is unique because it doesn’t have an actual collection. Instead, this non-collection museum is one of the only kunsthalles, or a facility that hosts art exhibitions, in America. This means that you’re sure to see something new and different every time you visit this art museum in Philadelphia.

The ICA is truly artist-centric, and it strives to help under-recognized artists gain the attention of the rest of the world. In fact, this is exactly what the Institute of Contemporary Art did in 1965 when it organized Andy Warhol’s first solo museum show. This commitment to accessibility and risk-taking means that you could see the next artistic legend when you visit, and at the very least, you’ll experience some of the country’s most-adventurous artistic showcases.

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts stands out for its art and architecture

Prepare to be dazzled when you step inside the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, or PAFA. Located on North Broad Street, this incredible art museum is just as famous for its impressive collection as it is for its breathtaking interior design. Who says the museum itself can’t be a work of art? With the permanent collection and special exhibits, be prepared to spend at least two to three hours to see it all.

The goal of PAFA is to collect and display prime examples of historic, modern, and contemporary art from American artists. Specifically, the museum strives to promote the works of women and those who have been overlooked by the mainstream art community. This includes artists of color, LGBTQ+ artists, and artists from small, regional communities. Together, works from all these minds help to tell a more comprehensive story about all of us.

If you’d like to immerse yourself in the arts even further, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts offers programs and classes for artists of all ages. Whether you know a child who’d like to take an art class or you’re looking for an undergraduate, graduate, or continuing education in fine arts, you can benefit from the vast experience of this institution in training artists.

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Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens is unlike the other museum

Art doesn’t just include classical sculpture or impressionist paintings. It can include gardens and public murals like those on display at Philadelphia’s Magic Garden (PMG). Referred to as “a mosaicked visionary art environment, gallery, and community arts center,” this space brings art to the people who visit its famous South Street location. Plan to spend at least an hour walking through this unique and memorable artistic environment.

The space strives to preserve, interpret, and celebrate Isaiah Zagar’s mosaic art and public murals. The Magic Gardens site features Zagar’s largest work of art, which is a fully tiled indoor space and sprawling outdoor sculpture garden that spans half a block. To keep things fresh and exciting, PMG features constantly changing special exhibitions in its two indoor galleries.

When it comes to your options for touring the space, you can come to visit in person and enjoy a 40-minute guided tour that will teach you about the artists, artwork, and neighborhood. Or you can check out the space from the comfort of home by taking a virtual tour that will make you feel like you’re really in the space. If you’d like a memento of your visit, you can check out the shop to pick up everything from puzzles and pens to shirts and stickers.

art museum to visit in philadelphia

Art is all around you in Philadelphia if you know where to look

You don’t always need to visit one of the many Philadelphia art museums to see something beautiful or thought-provoking. Sometimes, you can see something amazing just walking through neighborhoods, like Fishtown, Philly. 

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Guide To The Philadelphia Museum Of Art: Masterpieces & Tips

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is an amazing cultural showcase. It’s one of the best museums in the United States and a must visit on any Philadelphia itinerary.

In this guide, I give you an overview of the museum and identify 20+ of its must see masterpieces. I also give you must know tips for visiting.

At the foot of its grand steps, you’ll find the iconic bronze statue of Rocky, a beloved fictional character in Philadelphia’s lore.

Picasso, Woman and Children, 1961

For a bit of fun, channel your inner Rocky and jog up the iconic steps. At the top awaits a grand Neo-Classical building that looks like a Greek temple.

Overview Of The Philadelphia Museum of Art

The museum is renowned for its American and European art. The American pieces are among the finest collection in the country, with works by Thomas Eakins, Charles Wilson Peale, Jonathan Singleton Copley, Mary Cassatt, and Benjamin West.

It also houses an impressive collection of Medieval art, British art, and Asian art. It’s especially strong in Impressionist works, with pieces by Monet, Manet, Renoir, Pissarro, and Degas. And it has Post-Impressionist pieces by the likes of Van Gogh and Cezanne.

Not only that, the museum boasts the world’s most important collections of Marcel Duchamp and Constantin Brancusi outside Europe.

Modigliani, Blue Eyes, 1917

On the first floor, you’ll find the western entrance. This is where you’ll enter if you’ve been strolling along the Skuykill River. It houses important works of American art.

On the second floor, you’ll find more American art, European art from 1850-1900, and modern and contemporary art.

The Impressionism and Post-Impressionism works seem to draw the most crowds. The most famous pieces are in the Resnick Rotunda.

On the third floor you’ll find Asian art, Medieval art from 1100-1500, European art from 1500-1850, British art, and a few American period rooms. There’s also a collection of armor. But that was closed when I visited.

Benozso Gozzoli, predella panel, 14521

There’s also a temporary exhibition space. And be aware that some of the famous pieces may be traveling and thus not on display.

From 2017 to 2021, the museum underwent a renovation by renowned architect Frank Gehry, known as the “Core Project.” Gehry transformed the subterranean infrastructure on the ground and first floor.

But it has none of Gehry’s trademark flash and stainless steel. Rather, it’s a hushed intervention that does justice to the historic Beaux Arts building.

He added an impressive 20,000 square feet of additional gallery space, a revitalized central atrium, a switchback central staircase, and a vaulted walkway for hosting performances and gatherings.

When you enter and buy your ticket, you can pick up a map of the museum.

Charles Willson Peale, Staircase Group, 1795

Guide To The Philadelphia Museum of Art: Must See Masterpieces

Here are 21 amazing artworks and things you can’t miss at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

1. Peale, Staircase Group

The cornerstone of the museum’s American collection arrived In 1945, when the museum purchased Charles Willson Peale’s famous trompe l’oeil painting The Staircase Group . It’s considered a masterpiece of American portraiture.

It’s an illusionistic painting that features two of his sons, Raphaelle Peale and Titian Ramsay Peale, on a winding staircase.

The life size portrait is significant because it challenged traditional portrait conventions of the time. Instead of the standard formal poses, Peale depicted his sons in a relaxed and informal manner.

The painting captures a candid moment as the boys ascend the stairs. It’s notable for its composition and the sense of movement it conveys.

Thomas Eakins, The Gross Clinic, 1875

2. Thomas Eakins, The Gross Clini c

Thomas Eakins’ The Gross Clinic is among the greatest American paintings ever made. It depicts a dramatic surgical scene in a lecture room at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia.

Dr. Samuel D. Gross, a prominent surgeon, is shown performing surgery on a patient’s leg while surrounded by medical students and colleagues.

The painting is known for its realistic and detailed portrayal of the surgical procedure, with blood and instruments prominently featured. When it was unveiled, it was considered too gruesome for polite society.

But it’s a significant work because it captures the intensity and seriousness of medical education in the 19th century. It’s also a beautiful composition reflecting Eakins’ mastery of detail, light, and shadow.

Pablo Picasso, The Three Musicians, 1921

3. Pablo Picasso, The Three Musicians

Three Musicians is a large canvas painted by the most famous painter of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso.

It was the grand finale of his Cubism period and part of a series he completed in 1921. In Cubism, the subject consists of a series of planes, lines, and arcs. This approach forces the viewer to reconstruct and reassemble the subject.

Picasso’s composition is pieced together from thin and angular planes that don’t really match up. Three musicians sit in a shallow box-like room. They are dressed as the familiar Italian Commedia dell’arte theater figures that Picasso loved.

Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, 1912

4. Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase

The museum has entire rooms dedicated to Marcel Duchamp. He was a renowned Conceptual artist.

Initially, he worked in artists’ groups including Cubism. But he threw off those shackles and became one of the most original thinkers in modern art history. His motto was “I am interested in ideas, not merely in visual products.”

The prompted him to created some of his “readymades,” like the museum’s Fountain . It’s simply a toilet presented as “art.”

While Fountain was one of the most notorious works in art history, I prefer the artist’s Nude Descending A Staircase . This painting also caused a sensation when it was exhibited.

In it, the traditional female nude is transformed into a mechanized moving form. Duchamp achieves this effect with a combination of Cubist techniques and the aesthetic of a flip book style of animation.

Van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1988-89

5. Vincent Van Gogh, Sunflowers

Van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionism artist who spent most of his life in France. His work is known for its swirling line, raw emotional intensity, and bold vivid color.

This still life was part of the artist’s second series of sunflower paintings. It’s the only sunflower in a US museum.

Van Gogh created it when he lived in Arles , in southern France . He wanted to decorate the house for the arrival of his friend and fellow artist Paul Gauguin.

He said he wanted the sunflowers to look like “stained glass in a Gothic cathedral.” He painted them with thick stabbing brush strokes of ochre and red against a turquoise background. The flowers are energetic and seem to take on a life of their own.

Cezanne, Large Bathers, 1900-06

6. Cezanne, Large Bathers

Paul Cezanne was a pioneering Post-Impressionist artist.

His innovative use of color, form, and geometric shapes profoundly influenced the development of 20th century art, bridging the gap between Impressionism and Cubism.

Despite being modern, Cezanne had a profound interest in classicism. In particular, he was fascinated with the theme of bathing parties and nude women in landscapes. The topic dominated the last two decades of his life.

detail of Large Bathers

Cezanne’s Large Bathers occupies pride of place as the centerpiece of the Resnick Rotunda. The museum acquired the painting in 1937. It was the artist’s grandest rendition of this theme.

It’s a complex, unpolished scene. Cezanne used geometric shapes, bold brushwork, and fragmented and distorted forms. The bathers are still, de-eroticized, and strangely austere.

For myself, I am not that fond of the artist’s rather awkward bathers. They are not conventionally beautiful, almost missing actual hands and feet. But their radical originality redefined how to depict a nude and even the nature of painting itself.

art museum to visit in philadelphia

7. Constanin Brancusi, The Kiss

Born in Romania, Brancusi studied fine arts before moving to Paris. But he broke with traditional sculptural methods. He adopted a minimalist, abstract style, reducing a subject to its essential elements.

In The Kiss , he shows two embracing forms that merge into a single form. Two eyes become a single eye. Hairlines make a continuous arch.

The sculpture embodies Brancusi’s belief that art should capture the spiritual and emotional essence of its subject, rather than merely replicating its physical appearance.

There are also several versions of Brancusi’s famous Bird in Space and Princess X .

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge, 1889-90

8. Toulouse-Lautrec, At The Moulin Rouge

Toulousee-Lautrec was one of the greatest Post-Impressionist painters in France. He’s most well known for iconic posters of bawdy fin de siècle spots in  Mon t martre , like the Moulin Rouge.

There’s no judgment or moralizing in his paintings. Toulouse-Lautrec simply tried to capture his subjects daily life and languid boredom.

His art was marked by his innovative use of color, particularly flat areas of color, and strong, fluid lines. This would go on to influence the Fauves and the Expressionists.

Lautrec was a regular at the Moulin Rouge. This scene captures a training lesson of the new dancers by Valentine “the Boneless.” It has a sense of spontaneity, inviting the viewer into the spectacle.

READ : Guide to the Toulosue-Lautrec Museum in Albi France

art museum to visit in philadelphia

9. Edouard Manet, The Battle of USS Kearsarge and the CSS Alabama

Edouard Manet was a pioneering French artist of the 19th century. He’s often regarded as a bridge between Realism and Impressionism. I just adore his paintings.

This one is one of the greatest paintings ever of the American Civil War. It’s also Manet’s first known seascape.

It depicts an important naval battle set off the coast of France near Cherbourg. The USS Kearsarge was victorious, making headline news. You can see smoke rising from the hit to the CSS Alabama.

The painting was one of Manet’s first depictions of a current event.

art museum to visit in philadelphia

10. Gustave Courbet, Spanish Woman

Gustave Courbet was a 19th century French artist known for his role in the Realist art movement. He gained fame for his bold and unidealized depictions of everyday life.

Courbet often portrayed ordinary people and rural scenes with a keen focus on detail and a rejection of romanticized aesthetics.

In this portrait, he paints a beautiful Spanish woman who once nursed him back to health after cholera.

Though she’s lovely, he shows her with angular facial features and a slumped pose. When the painting debuted, critics disapproved of the painting’s honestly and realism.

art museum to visit in philadelphia

11. Jasper Johns, Painting with Two Balls

Jasper Johns is an iconic American artist known for his significant contributions to the Pop Art and Neo-Dada movements.

He gained fame in the 1950s and 1960s for his sensuously crafted riddles that blurred the line between reality and illusion. He used everyday objects, including flags, targets, and numbers, as subjects in his art.

In the 16 foot tall Two Balls , Johns follows this pattern. The painting is a chaotic landscape of color and gestural brushstrokes.

But Johns meticulously added two baseballs in a gap in the painting. They disrupt the surface, making it appear almost three dimensional.

The choice of baseballs as the subject reflects his interest in ordinary objects. It may also have been a poke at the Abstract Expressionists painters who came before him. They believed that a painting had to be a cerebral and unified painterly field.

Cy Twombly, Achaeans in Battle

12. Cy Twombly, Fifty Days at Ilium

Twombly is best known for his scribbled, abstract forms and splashes of color that combine fragments of Roman history and mythology. They invite viewers to contemplate the passage of time and the layers of history.

Fifty Days at Ilium is the pinnacle of the artist’s obsession with Greco-Roman mythology. In ten canvases in two rooms, it portrays the last 50 days of the Trojan War, a story of rage and heroism.

You can view the painting sequentially, interpret then in any order, or experience them as an all-encompassing panorama. If you want to really experience them, you’ll need to take some time.

To me, the most arresting paintings are shown above.

Giorgio de Chirico, The Soothsayer's Recompense, 1913

13. De Chirico , The Soothsayer’s Recompense

This is a painting created by the Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico in 1913.

De Chirico was a prominent figure in the Surrealist movement. He’s known for his metaphysical art style, which often featured dreamlike and enigmatic scenes.

This paintings is one of a series of melancholic landscapes. It features a lone statue of the Sleeping Ariadne in an empty Italian piazza. In Greek mythology, Ariadne was abandoned by her lover Theseus on the island of Naxos.

The classical world is contrasted, in the background, with a steam engine in the distance. This creates de Chirico’s trademark — an unsettling ambiguity of time and space.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Diana, 1892-93

14. Augustus Saint-Gaucens, Dianan, 1892-93

This beautiful 13 foot sculpture greets you as you ascend the staircase of the Great Stair Hall.

Saint-Gaudens was recognized as the finest sculptor in the US at the turn of the century. He is renowned for his contributions in the realm of public monuments and commemorative works.

The Diana sculpture formerly stood in Madison Square Garden. When that site was demolished in 1925, the museum adopted the sculpture.

The sculpture is a beautiful depiction of Diana, the goddess of the hunt. The museum restored the sculpture’s copper core and original gold leaf finish.

Fra Angelico, Dormition of the Virgin, 1425

15. Medieval Art

I was astonished at the museum’s first rate collection of medieval and early Renaissance art. Some of it is on loan from the Glencairn Museum, while it undergoes renovations.

In the permanent collection, there are some entire medieval portals and cloisters that have been relocated intact to the museum — the 12th century Portal from the Abbey Church of Saint-Laurent and the Cloister from the Abbey of Saint-Genis-des-Fontaines. You’ll also find stained glass, sculpture, capitols, relics, and artworks.

A few of the most famous paintings are Fra Angelico’s Dormition of the Virgin , Benozzo Gozzoli’s Presentation of Christ in the Temple , Pietro Lorenzetti’s The Virgin and Child Enthroned , and Sandro Botticelli’s Portrait of a Young Man .

READ : Famous Medieval Paintings In Italy

Bronzino, Cosimo I as Orpheus, 1537-39

16. Bronzino, Cosimo I As Orpheus

Bronzino was one of the most celebrated Italian Mannerist painters. Mannerism was a period that came after the high Renaissance. Bronzino was especially renowned for his portraits and was the official court painter for the Medici family in Florence .

His works are characterized by their meticulous attention to detail, refined compositions, and an elegant (sometimes enigmatic) portrayal of his subjects.

In this painting, he depicts his patron, Grand Duke Cosimo I. He did a number of propaganda style paintings of the duke to burnish his reputation as the great leader of one of the great Renaissance courts in Italy .

It’s an allegorical portrayal of the duke as the musician Orpheus from Greek mythology. Cosimo is naked, after having used his lyre to charm Cerberus and Hades. It was modeled after the Belvedere Torso in the Vatican Museums .

READ : Famous Mannerist Paintings In Italy

art museum to visit in philadelphia

17. Rogier van der Weyden , The Crucifixion

Rogier van der Weyden was a Flemish painter of the Northern Renaissance in the 15th century.

He was celebrated for his emotionally charged and highly detailed religious paintings. They often depicted scenes from the Bible and religious themes.

This painting is one of the museum’s famed Renaissance pieces. It has two panels. They were likely the wings of an altarpiece.

On the left side, you see the Virgin and John the Evangelist openly display their grief. They shed transparent tears over the death of Christ.

On the right is the crucifixion scene. Both scenes are set against red walls, which heighten the painting’s emotional impact.

Gainsborough, Portrait of Lady Rodney, 1778

18. British Art

Four rooms in the museum contain British art, architecture, and furnishings that were installed in 1928. They recreate the scale and grandeur of English country houses.

The rooms are filled with art from the 17th to 19th century. The museum owns over 130 British artworks.

There are portraits, landscapes, and scenes of British life. There are artworks by Gainsborough, George Romney, Joshua Reynolds, Hogarth, and others.

Peter Paul Rubens, Prometheus Unbound, 1611-18

19. Rubens, Prometheus Unbound

Rubens considered this painting to be one of his most important works. It shows the virtuoso artist at the height of his powers. The painting depicts the brutal tale of Prometheus with violence.

Prometheus was the titan who gave fire to humanity. In punishment, Zeus had Prometheus bound to a rock on Mount Caucasus. Each day, an eagle would come to eat Prometheus’s liver, which would regenerate overnight due to his immortality.

The painting is graphic. The enormous bird’s beak rips open the titan’s torso, exposing blood-soaked entrails. One of the eagle’s talons gouges Prometheus’s right eye.

His left eye is locked on the predator, signaling he is fully aware of his torture. His writhing legs, clenched fists, and tousled hair convey his abject agony.

The hulking figure of Prometheus was inspired by Michelangelo’s works. The picture’s asymmetrical composition, in which Prometheus tumbles downward with his left arm almost reaching beyond the canvas, was inspired by a Titian painting.

Turner, Burning of the Houses of Parliament, 1834

20. Turner, Burning of the Houses of Parliament

J.M.W. Turner was a renowned English Romantic painter known for his mastery of landscape and marine art. His works often conveyed the sublime beauty and power of nature through the use of color and light.

In this painting, Turner depicts the burning of the Houses of Parliament in 1834. He witnessed the event from the south bank of the Thames and recorded what he saw in sketches.

The artist then created this luminous painting (and another on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art ). It shows the struggle as boats head toward the flames. The fire is magnified to emphasize the destructive power and man’s helplessness against it.

Lady with a Guitar, a possible Vermeer

21. Lady With a Guitar

The museums owns a painting, Lady With A guitar , that may or may not be a Vermeer. The famed Dutch Golden Age artist completed only 37 known works, so paintings by him are exceedingly rare.

For years, the painting was thought to be a copy after the Vermeer original, which is in London’s Kenwood House. But that assumption has been challenged by some art historians who now say it’s Vermeer’s own replica.

The painting is not very well conserved. It may have been damaged by a poorly conducted cleaning when the museum acquired it in 1917.

One clue supporting the attribution to the Vermeer is the use of an expensive ultramarine paint that Vermeer favored. The paintings are also almost identical, with the exception of the lady’s hair.

For a long time, the painting was hidden away as historians analyzed it. But it is on view in its unrestored condition. Information panels give a history of efforts to authenticate it.

art museum to visit in philadelphia

Practical Guide & Tips For The Philadelphia Museum of Art

1. practical information.

Address : The museum is located at 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

The museum is closed Tuesday and Wednesday, so I don’t recommend visiting the city on those days. The other days of the week the museum is open from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. On Friday night, it’s open until 8:45 m.

Ticket Price : adults $30, seniors $28, students $14, under 18 free

The museum is also included in the Philadelphia Go City Pass . If you have the pass (like I did), you will need to get in the regular ticket line, have the QR code on your pass scanned, and then get a paper ticket to give to the docent at the museum entry.

Admission is free on the first Sunday of the month and every Friday night from 5:00 pm to 8:45 pm. 

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2. How To Get There

The museum is just a short distance from Center City. You can use the city’s public transportation system (subway, buses and trolleys) to get there.

If you tale the subway, SEPTA, to reach the museum, use the Broad Street Line. Get off at the City Hall station and then walk or transfer to a bus for the short journey to the museum.

The PHLASH Downtown Loop and the Hop on Hop Off Bus also stops at the museum.

If you’re driving to the museum, you can use GPS to find the best route. There is a parking lot at the museum. But it can fill up quickly, especially during peak hours and special events.

Andy Warhol, Shot Orange Marilyn, 1964

2. How Long To Spend At The Museum

The museum is spread out over 200 galleries. It’s massive.

If you want to see it all, I would plan to dedicate a 3-4 hours. I spent 3 hours there and didn’t see everything. Currently, some of the galleries are closed for renovation, including the armor, Japanese art, and East Asian art spaces.

If you’re not particularly an art lover, I would pick an area or two of interest and focus on them or take the one hour highlights tour. If you only have limited time, head to the Rensnick Rotunda on the second floor to see the museum’s greatest hits.

The museums is so vast and diverse that it really rewards repeat visits.

3. Free Guided Tours

The museum offers guided tours daily at 11:00 am , 12:00 pm, 1:00, 2:00 pm, and 3:0 pm. You can choose among highlights tours, Impressionism tours, American art tours, etc.

Check the website to see which one interests you. Tours meet on the second floor.

Rocky sculpture

3. Rocky Sculpture

The popular Rocky sculpture is at the base of the Rocky Steps leading up to the museum’s east entrance on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. It’s to the right side.

The statue is based on the fictional character Rocky Balboa, portrayed by Sylvester Stallone in the “Rocky” film series, which began with the 1976 film “Rocky.” The character is a working-class boxer who becomes a symbol of determination and perseverance.

You’ll find a line to take selfies with the iconic sculpture, which was created by sculptor A. Thomas Schomberg. The statue was a prop used in filming of Rocky III in 1982 and was later donated to the city of Philadelphia.

>>> Click here to book a tour of Rocky filming locations

Vasily Kandinsky, Improvisation No. 29, 1912

There are three places to eat at the museum. The Espresso Bar is on the ground floor. Stir Restaurant is on the first floor. The Balcony Cafe is on the second floor.

5. Museums Stores

The museum has four stores spread out through the museum. It’s a nicely curated selection of books, gifts, posters, drawing tools, and local artisan wares.

6. Other Attractions Near The Museum

There are a slew of other attractions near the museum. If you want more art, you can visit the Rodin Museum and the Barnes Foundation . They are small, but excellent, museums.

Logan Square is only about .5 miles from the museum. You can stroll there, admire the Swan Memorial Fountain, and then check out the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul.

Logan Square

The museum is also only 1 mile from City Hall. You can make a reservation to climb the tower, check out the LOVE sculpture, and then head to Reading Terminal Market for lunch or dinner.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my guide to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. You may enjoy these other Philadelphia travel guides and resources:

  • 2 days in Philadelphia itinerary
  • Top Attractions in Philadelphia
  • 2 Days in Washington D.C Itinerary
  • 2 days in Denver itinerary
  • 2 days in Cleveland itinerary
  • 3 Day Itinerary for Boston
  • 1 Day Itinerary for Cambridge
  • 7-10 Day Itinerary for Vermont
  • 10 Day Itinerary for New Hampshire
  • 25 Most Beautiful Towns in New England
  • 10 Day Itinerary for Coastal Maine
  • Fall Foliage Road Trip in New England

If you need a guide to visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art, pin it for later.

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2 thoughts on “Guide To The Philadelphia Museum Of Art: Masterpieces & Tips”

Thank-you for this well-written and informative list — it helped me decide which parts of the museum to focus on. Keep up the great work!

Have a great visit Richard. It’s an amazing museum.

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Last Updated on September 24, 2023 by Leslie Livingston

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Named one of CNN's Top Ten "Global Must-See Exhibitions,"  The Art of the Brick  exhibit by artist Nathan Sawaya is a critically acclaimed collection of inspiring artworks made exclusively from one of the most recognizable toys in the world: the LEGO® brick. From child's toy to sophisticated art form and beyond, the world's largest display of LEGO art ever features original pieces as well as re-imagined versions of the world’s most famous art masterpieces like Van Gogh's  Starry Night  and Da Vinci's  Mona Lisa  as well as a gallery showcasing an innovative, multimedia collection of LEGO brick infused photography produced in tandem with award-winning photographer Dean West. ​ 

After exploring the exhibit galleries, guests will enter a 9,000-square-foot brick play space to build their imaginative creations using hundreds of thousands of colorful bricks. 

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Ticket Pricing & Info

The Art of the Brick

Exhibition Tickets

Daytime Hours: 9:30 AM - 5 PM  Includes Museum Admission. Adult: $43 | Child (3-11): $39

Evening Hours: 5-8 PM Thu-Sat  Does not include Museum Admission.  Adult: $20 | Child (3-11): $20

Secure your preferred timeslot in advance and avoid the Box Office wait!  

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The Art of the Brick

Member Tickets

Daytime Hours: 9:30 AM - 5 PM Includes Museum Admission. 

TFI Member (3+): $16 (a savings of up to $27 per person!)  

Evening Hours: 5-8 PM Thu-Sat

Does not include Museum Admission. 

TFI Member (3+): $16 (a savings of up to $27 per person!)

Members do not pay services fees! 

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The Art of the Brick

Flex Time Tickets

Valid for any time slot on the date indicated at the time of purchase. Not available online; purchase at Box Office or call 215-448-1200

Child (3-11): $61

The Art of the Brick

Group Reservations

Includes Museum Admission.  Adult Groups: $32  Youth Groups: $26 

Groups pricing rates are valid for groups of 15+

Book Your Group Visit

Know Before You Go

  • Advanced tickets are strongly recommended to secure your preferred timeslot.
  • The Art of the Brick is a timed-entry exhibit , which allows us to manage the number of guests in the exhibit, providing the best possible experience for everyone. 
  • If you have daytime tickets, especially late afternoon, we suggest you plan to arrive at the museum early to explore our core exhibits before The Art of the Brick, as those galleries and experiences close at 5:00 pm daily . 
  • Weekends and holidays are our busiest times . We ask that you only enter The Art of the Brick at your designated entry time. If you arrive earlier, you may be asked to return at the time stated on your ticket. 

The Franklin Institute is located in Center City Philadelphia, at the intersection of 20th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

Onsite parking is limited, and $25 per vehicle. TFI Members save $10!



271 North 21st Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103

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Learn about the museum's accessible entrances and seating, logistics for parking and wheelchairs, sensory-friendly options, and more.

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A big guide to museums & attractions in greater philadelphia, your philly bucket list just got a little longer....

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It’s no secret (or surprise) that a city as grand and expansive as Philadelphia offers a wealth of authentic and top-notch experiences.

And with so many museums, attractions, historic landmarks, parks, markets, family activities and more in this vibrant city and region, it’s challenging to decide where to begin.

What do you choose?

  • Dinosaurs ( The Academy of Natural Sciences ) or daylilies ( Longwood Gardens )?
  • Vincent van Gogh ( Barnes Foundation ) or Count von Count ( Sesame Place )?
  • Revolutionary history ( Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell ) or outdoor reveling ( Wissahickon Valley Park and Fairmount Park )?

Below, we’ve rounded up dozens of attractions and museums that make Greater Philadelphia an amazing place to explore, whether visiting for the first time or have spent your whole life here.

Pro tip: The most convenient way to reach many of these attractions is aboard the Philly PHLASH Downtown Loop , which runs seasonally and offers affordable per-ride tickets in addition to one-day and two-day passes.

Of course, a comprehensive list of every museum and attraction in Philly would list in the hundreds. For more under-the-radar options, check out our guide to hidden gems in Greater Philadelphia .

Liberty Bell Center

The Liberty Bell , originally cast in England and recast in 1753 in Philadelphia, originally hung atop the Pennsylvania State House (now known as Independence Hall). It was soon adopted by abolitionists, suffragists and justice-seekers across the globe as an enduring symbol of freedom. The Bell was moved from Independence Hall to a pavilion across the street in 1976 and then to Liberty Bell Center two decades ago. Visitors can view the Bell and tour the center — which offers a number of exhibits — for free year-round.

Where: Liberty Bell Center, 526 Market Street

Independence Hall

The exterior of Independence Hall in Philadelphia

Independence Hall is the centerpiece of the renowned Independence National Historical Park . In 1776, the Founding Fathers came together to sign the Declaration of Independence in this historic building. Eleven years later, representatives from a dozen states met here to lay the framework for the U.S. Constitution. Guided tours are available year-round, but visitors must reserve free timed tickets (with $1 service charge) online or by phone in advance for entrance.

Where: Independence Hall, 520 Chestnut Street

The President's House

The exterior of The President's House in Philadelphia

Presidents George Washington and John Adams each lived at The President’s House during their time in office. While the original building has since been demolished, the foundation remains and now serves as a free outdoor exhibit, The President’s House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation , where looped videos give a special focus to the lives of the nine enslaved men and women who lived and worked here during Washington’s tenure.

Where: The President's House, 600 Market Street

Independence National Historical Park

Aerial view of Independence Mall and Independence Hall

In the heart of Old City and Society Hill — now known as  Philadelphia’s Historic District  — is where the country was born, as evidenced by the seminal locations that make up  Independence National Historical Park . And while the Liberty Bell Center and Independence Hall are no doubt the most iconic things to do in the park, they’re far from the only ones. Congress Hall , Old City Hall , Carpenters’ Hall , the portrait gallery at the Second Bank of the U.S. and more make up this historic park, which is administered by the National Park Service.

Where: Various locations including Carpenters' Hall, 320 Chestnut Street

National Constitution Center

A couple visits the National Constitution Center

Dedicated to the four most powerful pages in America’s history, the National Constitution Center examines “We the People.” Museum-goers can explore exhibits and artifacts, view an original copy of the Bill of Rights, walk among 42 life-size bronze statues of delegates who attended the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and learn more about Constitutional amendments that ended slavery (13th Amendment), and granted the right to vote to Black men (15th Amendment) and some women (19th Amendment).

Where: National Constitution Center, 525 Arch Street

Museum of the American Revolution

Museum of the American Revolution

The Museum of the American Revolution brings to life the world-changing War of Independence through an unmatched collection of artifacts, including weapons, documents, personal items, works of art and General George Washington’s headquarters tent. With powerful films, digital touchscreens and historical vignettes, the museum recreates the drama and the details of the country’s climactic birth.

Where: Museum of the American Revolution, 101 S. 3rd Street

The African American Museum in Philadelphia

The African American Museum in Philadelphia

Founded in 1976, The African American Museum in Philadelphia is the first institution built by a major U.S. city to preserve, interpret and exhibit the heritage and culture of African Americans. The museum takes a fresh, bold look at the roles of African Americans in the founding of the nation through the core exhibit Audacious Freedom. Visiting exhibitions and rotating programs reveal the history, stories and cultures of those of African descent throughout the African diaspora.

Where: The African American Museum in Philadelphia, 701 Arch Street

Betsy Ross House

Betsy Ross House

America’s most famous flag maker greets guests at her 18th-century upholstery shop, part of the tiny dwelling which today is the Betsy Ross House museum where visitors learn about Ross’ life and legend, and enjoy programs, storytelling and activities. Tours are available either self-guided or with an audio guide with a general admission ticket.

Where: Betsy Ross House, 239 Arch Street

Elfreth’s Alley

Elfreth’s Alley boasts 300 years of history on its charming cobblestone street lined with quaint still-occupied row houses. While a modern city has sprung up around it, the residential alley preserves three centuries of evolution through its old-fashioned flower boxes, shutters, Flemish bond brickwork and other architectural details. Two adjacent houses, built in 1755, are now a museum open to the public.

Where: Elfreth's Alley, 124-126 Elfreth's Alley

Franklin Square

art museum to visit in philadelphia

Enjoy the outdoors at fun-filled Franklin Square park, named in honor of — who else? — Benjamin Franklin. Take a mini-tour of Philadelphia as you putt-putt your way through scale models of the city’s iconic sites at Philly Mini Golf , or enjoy a nostalgic ride on the Parx Liberty Carousel , a classic tribute to Philadelphia’s great heritage of carousel-making. There’s also a large fountain (featuring seasonal shows and nighttime light displays), SquareBurger food stand and lots of open space to lounge or run around. Summer visitors shouldn’t miss the annual Chinese Lantern Festival , while winter wanderers should earmark a visit for Winter in Franklin Square programming.

Where: Franklin Square, 200 N. 6th Street

Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History

Guests walk on the first floor of the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish Adults

Take a journey through 360 years of Jewish history in the U.S. at the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History, which is filled with more than 1,200 artifacts and documents, 2,500 images, 30 original films and 13 state-of-the-art interactive media displays — all free to visit (with a suggested donation). The experience delivers a rich tale that traces the path of the nation’s Jewish diaspora from struggling immigrants to integral citizens. While you’re there, snap a picture of the cheeky OY/YO sculpture installed outside of the museum entrance.

Where: Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History, 101 S. Independence Mall East

Christ Church and Christ Church Burial Ground

Constructed in the early 1700s, Christ Church was a sacred gathering place for some of the most prominent early Americans, including George Washington, Betsy Ross and Benjamin Franklin, whose reserved family pew is a popular stop on the church’s guided 20-minute tour. A few blocks away lies Christ Church Burial Ground , home of the final resting place of many of the nation’s first history makers, including Franklin himself. Toss a penny onto his grave for good luck (which can be done with good aim from the sidewalk).

Where: Christ Church, 20 N. American Street

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Christ Church Burial Ground, 340 N. 5th Street

National Liberty Museum

A fixture in Old City since 2000, the National Liberty Museum is a gallery dedicated to teaching visitors about the diversity of Americans and respect for all people and celebrating the stories of heroes across the globe. The museum’s eight galleries showcase nearly 80 imaginative and interactive exhibits and close to 200 works of contemporary art (including an expansive collection of glass art), surrounded by the stories of 2,000 difference-makers like Jackie Robinson, Nelson Mandela and Malala Yousafzai.

Where: National Liberty Museum, 321 Chestnut Street

Delaware River Waterfront

Spruce street harbor park.

People hang out on a floating barge under colorful lights at night at Spruce STreet Harbor Park in Philly

Spruce Street Harbor Park , the wildly popular spring-to-fall relaxation destination on the Delaware River, attracts impressive crowds with bocce and shuffleboard, tree-slung hammocks and colorful LED lights, floating barges with over-the-water seating, beer and food options, and a variety of events in a fun urban beach setting.

Where: Spruce Street Harbor Park, 301 S. Christopher Columbus Boulevard

Independence Blue Cross RiverRink

In both summer and winter, you can get your skate on at Independence Blue Cross RiverRink , where there’s roller skating during Summerfest and ice skating at Winterfest , along with a carousel, rides (including a Ferris wheel), an arcade, and plenty to eat and drink year-round. The site offers a beachy vibe during warm months, and plenty of holiday festivities during the winter season.

Where: Independence Blue Cross RiverRink, 101 S. Christopher Columbus Boulevard

Independence Seaport Museum

Floating on the Delaware River are two incongruous vessels that guests are encouraged to claim aboard and explore: the 130-year-old Navy Cruiser USS Olympia (the nation’s oldest steel warship) and World War II-era USS Becuna (a 300-foot Balao submarine). But those museum ships are just the tip of what the Independence Seaport Museum has to offer. The maritime history museum features over 25,000 artifacts across a half-dozen hands-on exhibits including a working boat shop and a collection of large-scale model ships.

Where: Independence Seaport Museum, 211 S. Christopher Columbus Boulevard

Race Street Pier & Cherry Street Pier

Serene, park-like Race Street Pier features two levels for recreation; a multi-tiered seating area for picnics, yoga or watching the tide roll in; and — of course — absolutely transcendent views of the Delaware River and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. Located just next door, Cherry Street Pier is a bustling indoor-outdoor mixed-use public space, home to artist studios, a marketplace, and food and beverages purveyors serving refreshments alfresco on the pier’s garden-style patio café.

Where: Race Street Pier, Race Street & North Columbus Boulevard

Cherry Street Pier, 121 N. Christopher Columbus Boulevard

Adventure Aquarium

Children looking at a hippo at Adventure Aquarium

Adventure Aquarium — located just across the Delaware River in Camden, New Jersey — delights visitors with scores of sea creatures including hippos to marvel at, a Shark Bridge to cross, penguins to meet, stingrays to feed, and horseshoe crabs, starfish and sharks to touch. The aquarium’s big wow exhibit: a massive tank of sea turtles, stingrays, schooling fish and sharks, including a great hammerhead.

Where: Adventure Aquarium, 1 Riverside Drive, Camden, NJ

Battleship New Jersey Museum

Across the Delaware from Center City Philly, the Battleship New Jersey is a floating museum ship open to all who wish to explore America’s naval heritage aboard Admiral “Bull” Halsey’s flagship and the country’s most decorated combat ship. The 887-foot, 45,000-ton gunboat offers a guided tour and interactive exhibits displaying artifacts of the ship’s active past (from World War II to Korea to Vietnam to the Gulf War) and its impressive 16-inch turret, where 2,700-pound shells were fired at targets up to 23 miles away.

Where: Battleship New Jersey, 100 Clinton Street, Camden, NJ

Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Logan Square & Fairmount

Philadelphia museum of art.

Great Stair Hall at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

One of the nation’s largest art institutions, the Philadelphia Museum of Art rises majestically at the end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Inside are vast collections, including Renaissance, American and impressionist art, plus rotating special exhibitions. The one-acre Sculpture Garden extends the museum’s galleries to the outdoors, as do its famous steps (see below).

Where: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway

Rodin Museum

At home in the first American city to exhibit his works, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway’s Rodin Museum houses the largest public collection of Auguste Rodin’s works outside of Paris, including 20 of the French master’s sculptures, as well as exhibits of drawings, paintings and academic studies. The museum’s garden displays a bronze cast of The Thinker and the only original cast of The Gates of Hell in North America.

Where: Rodin Museum, 2151 Benjamin Franklin Parkway

A Guide to the Rocky Statue and the Rocky Steps

The Rocky Statue and the Rocky Steps — also known as the entrance staircase to the Philadelphia Museum of Art — are two of the most popular attractions in Philadelphia. Snagging a selfie with the statue and then running up the steps (just like Rocky himself) for a snapshot at the top (with that picture-perfect skyline in the background) is pretty much a must on your first visit to Philadelphia.

Where: Rocky Steps, 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway

Barnes Foundation

Visitors at the Barnes Foundation

The Barnes Foundation is home to one of the world’s most important collections of impressionist, post-impressionist and early modernist paintings by renowned artists like Renoir, Cézanne, Picasso and van Gogh. The museum also showcases American paintings and decorative arts, metalwork, African sculpture and Native American textiles, jewelry and ceramics, all presented in philanthropist Albert C. Barnes’ distinctive arrangements.

Where: Barnes Foundation, 2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway

Eastern State Penitentiary

A look down a long hallway of prison cells at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia

Once the most famous and expensive prison in the world, the massive Eastern State Penitentiary operated from 1829 to 1970 and introduced Americans to the concept of prison as a reform (penitentiary for “penance”) tool. Today, the site — which once housed notorious criminals like Al Capone and Willie Sutton — offers self-guided tours that explore the attraction’s history, along with modern social justice issues that surround incarceration. If your visit brings you in October, be sure to experience the site’s popular Halloween Nights immersive haunted house experience.

Where: Eastern State Penitentiary, 2027 Fairmount Avenue

The Franklin Institute

Kids crawl inside the Giant Heart, one of many interactive elements at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia

The Franklin Institute , one of the leading science museums in the country, showcases how science affects every aspect of life. In addition to beloved hands-on permanent exhibits like the highly interactive Your Brain , the iconic Giant Heart and the mesmerizing four-story Foucault’s Pendulum , a rotating roster of special exhibitions adds to the museum’s appeal.

Where: The Franklin Institute, 222 N. 20th Street

The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University

Dinosaur Hall at The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia

The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University is America’s oldest natural history museum. Visitors can wander through a tropical garden filled with live butterflies, meet live animals, see three continents of wildlife in their natural habitats and get face to face with towering dinosaurs.

Where: The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway

  • Center City

Reading Terminal Market

People walking through Reading Terminal Market

Center City ’s iconic railway-terminal-turned-epicurean-haven, Reading Terminal Market is a one-stop shop for local produce, meats, artisanal cheeses, desserts and more. The indoor public market, one of the oldest in the nation, also provides open seating where customers can enjoy meals from dozens of diverse merchants, including popular Amish vendors (and, of course, cheesesteaks). Want to know what to eat and where to get it? We can help with that .

Where: Reading Terminal Market, 51 N. 12th Street

City Hall & Dilworth Park

Couple on the City Hall tower tour

Philadelphia’s City Hall — once the tallest building in the world — has been the city’s government headquarters for more than 100 years. The elaborate 14.5-acre masonry structure remains the country’s largest municipal building, and its exterior features more than 250 sculptures, including the 37-foot-tall, 27-ton bronze statue of William Penn above the iconic clock tower — the tallest statue atop any building on earth. And Dilworth Park — City Hall’s popular western-facing front yard — is a modern and welcoming outdoor space with tree groves, benches, two cafes, and a large programmable fountain that transforms into an ice rink in the winter and a roller rink in the summer.

Where: City Hall, 1400 John F. Kennedy Boulevard

Dilworth Park, 1 S. 15th Street

Mütter Museum

art museum to visit in philadelphia

The Mütter Museum is one of America’s finest museums of medical history. Its “disturbingly informative” displays (many not for the faint of heart) help the public understand the mysteries of the human body and appreciate the diagnosis and treatment of disease. One of the most popular exhibits: actual slides of Albert Einstein’s brain.

Where: Mütter Museum, 19 S. 22nd Street

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Visitors looking at art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art

The first art museum and school in the nation, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts features elaborate Frank Furness architecture that’s as compelling as the American art on display within. A Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington is a highlight, as are other well-known paintings by both classic and contemporary artists like Winslow Homer, Kehinde Wiley, John Singer Sargent, Jacob Lawrence, Edward Hopper and Cecilia Beaux.

Where: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 118-128 N. Broad Street

A favorite destination for tourists and locals alike, John F. Kennedy Plaza gets its nickname — LOVE Park — from Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE sculpture that sits within the public space and serves as the grand entrance to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway . Just a short walk away stands the equally grand AMOR sculpture, the Spanish version of the LOVE sculpture, on display at Sister Cities Park .

Where: LOVE Park, 15th & Arch streets

Rittenhouse Square

People walking through Rittenhouse Square Park

Rittenhouse Square , the one-block commons that gives the surrounding neighborhood its name, is more popular with sunbathers, readers, families, artists, craft and produce vendors, people-watchers and even dogs than city founder William Penn ever could have imagined. One of Penn’s five original squares, Rittenhouse is the city’s best-known, and perhaps most-beloved, park.

Where: Rittenhouse Square, 210 W. Rittenhouse Square

Schuylkill River Trail & Schuylkill Banks Boardwalk

The view of the Schuylkill River and the Philadelphia skyline from the South Street Bridge

The Schuylkill River Trail — a 30-mile recreational path running along the Schuylkill River from Center City Philadelphia to Parker Ford in Chester County — is a favorite for bicyclists, runners, hikers, amblers and families. One of the most beautiful portions of the Trail is the Schuylkill Banks Boardwalk , a 15-foot-wide, 2,000-foot-long, ADA-compliant concrete path that juts out over the Schuylkill River, providing runners, bikers and pedestrians with a connection between Locust Street and the South Street Bridge.

Where: Various locations including Schuylkill Banks Boardwalk, South 25th & Locust streets

Masonic Temple

The castle-like-exterior of The Masonic Temple in Philly

Towering and majestic, the Masonic Temple has stood tall across from City Hall since 1873, serving as headquarters of the Freemason fraternity with 14th-century roots and a membership that included Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, whose statues pose outside its entrance. The temple’s Freemasonry artifacts, stunning architecture (Victorian inside, medieval Norman on the exterior) and opulent décor continue to wow visitors on guided tours to this day.

Where: Masonic Temple, 1 N. Broad Street

South Philadelphia

South 9th street italian market.

Italian immigrants established this open-air spot in the late 19th century, which lays claim to being America’s oldest outdoor street market. Though still called the Italian Market , the historic strip along South 9th Street in South Philadelphia now reflects the neighborhood’s multicultural makeup, offering Mexican, Vietnamese and Korean eats alongside Italian restaurants, bakeries and markets selling cheeses, meats, produce and more.

Where: Italian Market, 919 S. 9th Street

Pat’s and Geno’s

Pat's Steaks and Geno's at night

Eating a cheesesteak is essential when visiting Philly. Pat’s King of Steaks founder Pat Olivieri invented the city’s signature sandwich back in 1930. The popular shop on Ninth Street and Passyunk Avenue grills 24 hours a day, as does Geno’s Steaks , the rival across the street that opened in 1966. For more than half a century, Pat’s and Geno’s have waged a (mostly) friendly competition, with visitors often ordering from both shops to decide which steak they deem best.

Where: Pat's King of Steaks, 1237 E. Passyunk Avenue

Geno's Steaks, 1219 S. 9th Street

Philadelphia's Magic Gardens

People enjoying Philadelphia's Magic Gardens

Mosaics bloom at Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens , a fantasy-like art showplace on South Street, presenting and preserving the work of artist Isaiah Zagar. Visitors can take a tour and snap selfies throughout the half-city-block wonderland constructed from bicycle spokes, broken mirrors, reclaimed glass, tiles, and an assortment of found items and urban waste.

Where: Philadelphia's Magic Gardens, 1020 South Street

Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum

Ferraris, Alfa Romeos, Bugattis, Mercedes, Mustangs and more of the sportiest of sports cars are on display at the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum , part of a collection of over 75 historic, fast, sleek and just plain cool rides. The Southwest Philly museum hosts rotating exhibits showcasing the history of sports cars and racing machines, plus regularly takes vehicles from the collection out for a spin during scheduled demonstration days.

Where: Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum, 6825-31 Norwitch Drive

West Philadelphia

Philadelphia zoo.

art museum to visit in philadelphia

America’s first public zoo and a foremost conservation organization, the Philadelphia Zoo is home to nearly 1,700 animals, many rare and endangered. Zoo360, a first-in-the-world animal travel and exploration train system, enables primates and big cats to move above and across the main visitor pathway. The 42-acre campus features a variety of exhibits, including Big Cat Falls (with lions and tigers and pumas, oh my) and Water Is Life, home to the zoo’s popular red panda display.

Where: Philadelphia Zoo, 3400 W. Girard Avenue

Penn Museum

The renowned Penn Museum is known for its collection of art and artifacts from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Greco-Roman World, Asia, Africa and the Americas (including a Native American exhibit). Items on display include Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets (some of the world’s oldest writing), 4,500-year-old jewelry of a Mesopotamian queen and the massive, 3,000-year-old Sphinx of Ramses II. Gardens, fountains and a koi pond make the outside quite impressive as well.

Where: Penn Museum, 3260 South Street

Institute of Contemporary Art

Open to the public free of charge, the Institute of Contemporary Art has been instrumental in showcasing the work of emerging and under-recognized artists since 1963. It led the way with first-ever museum shows from Andy Warhol, Laurie Anderson and Robert Indiana, as well as early exhibits from Robert Mapplethorpe and Cy Twombly. Presented in kunsthalle style, the Institute houses no permanent collections — so every visit is a new experience.

Where: Institute of Contemporary Art, 118 S. 36th Street

Bartram's Garden

North America’s oldest botanical garden, Bartram’s Garden (dating back to 1728) first belonged to Quaker John Bartram, Sr., self-taught botanist to King George III, who collected, cultivated and sold plant specimens from North America to European aristocrats. Originally seasonal fishing grounds for the indigenous Lenape, today the site includes the 18th-century Bartram family house and outbuildings, a 17-acre meadow, a bike path, public access to the Schuylkill River, and an array of naturalistic, woodland and formal gardens. Garden admission is free.

Where: Bartram's Garden, 5400 Lindbergh Boulevard

Please Touch Museum

Families playing at the Please Touch Museum

Recognized as one of the nation’s top children’s attractions, the Please Touch Museum includes two full floors of interactive exhibit zones, plus a fully restored 115 year-old carousel. Kids can play and pretend amid Alice’s Wonderland, the Rocket Room and other hands-on fun, all inside Fairmount Park’s National Historic Landmark Memorial Hall, built for 1876 Centennial World’s Fair.

Where: Please Touch Museum, 4231 Avenue of the Republic

Shofuso Japanese Cultural Center

An unexpected gem deep inside Fairmount Park is the Shofuso Japanese Cultural Center , a post-war gift from Japan to the U.S. modeled on a traditional early 17th-century Japanese temple complex with guest house, teahouse and bathhouse. Participate in an authentic tea ceremony, explore the authentic architecture and living history, or find Zen while feeding the fish in the koi pond. The center is surrounded by century-old cherry trees which also host spring’s Cherry Blossom Festival .

Where: Shofuso Japanese Cultural Center, Horticultural Drive and Lansdowne Drive

North and Northwest Philadelphia

The rail park.

Rising two stories off the ground, The Rail Park is the city’s expansive planned overhead greenway built atop the former Reading Viaduct railway. Eventually stretching three miles from Northern Liberties to Brewerytown when complete, the currently-open quarter-mile Phase One portion boasts a simple meandering pathway, rustic plantings, comfy swings, and plenty of places to relax and take in the stellar views over the city’s Callowhill neighborhood.

Where: The Rail Park, Entrance on Callowhill Street between 11th and 12th streets

Boathouse Row & Kelly Drive

Boathouse Row

Note:  As of March 20, 2023, Boathouse Row’s iconic lights are undergoing maintenance, and will remain dark through the end of 2023. Read more  here .

Boathouse Row , a National Historic Landmark, consists of 10 charming boathouses on the banks of the Schuylkill River. At night, the glittering lights that frame the buildings make for idyllic scenery as they reflect off of the river’s surface. Boathouse Row sits on scenic Kelly Drive, a prime spot for outdoor recreation that runs along the east side of the Schuylkill River from the Philadelphia Museum of Art to Lincoln Drive.

Where: Boathouse Row, 1 Boathouse Row

Fairmount Park

Endless trails, historic houses, Laurel Hill Cemetery, the Horticulture Center, Smith Memorial Playground and Treetop Quest Philly are among the many pleasant surprises that await explorers at Fairmount Park , one of the nation’s largest urban parks stretching from Boathouse Row to West Philadelphia, Strawberry Mansion, Chestnut Hill and Northeast Philadelphia. Pro tip: Head to Belmont Plateau (above) for big skyline views.

Where: Various locations including Belmont Plateau, 1800 Belmont Mansion Drive

Wissahickon Valley Park

With more than 50 miles of rugged trails, Wissahickon Valley Park ’s thousands of acres are great for hiking, cycling and exploring. Wissahickon schist bedrock, sliced through centuries ago, has created steep hills punctuated by a creek, with paths for both climbers and horseback riders. Of particular note is Forbidden Drive, a five-mile packed gravel trail deep inside the park offering stunning views. Along this route, don’t miss the Thomas Mill Bridge , the last remaining covered bridge in any major American city.

Where: Wissahickon Valley Park, Valley Green Road

Johnson House Historic Site

On a then-quiet boulevard in Germantown in the 1850s, five siblings (and their spouses) from a Quaker abolitionist family served up their home to shelter and care for escaped enslaved Africans, a crucial stop on the Underground Railroad . Today, the well-preserved 16th-century Johnson House Historic Site offers tours that highlight the injustices of slavery and displays artifacts and the spaces where freedom fighters like William Still and Harriet Tubman stayed while shuttling fugitive slaves to safety.

Where: Johnson House Historic Site, 6306 Germantown Avenue

Philadelphia's Countryside

Longwood gardens.

art museum to visit in philadelphia

Attracting visitors from around the globe to Chester County, Longwood Gardens features 1,000-plus acres filled with outdoor and indoor gardens, 9,000 different species of plants, spectacular fountains, and picturesque meadows and woodlands. The horticultural haven also hosts many events each year, including flower shows, gardening demonstrations, educational programs, children’s activities and concerts.

Where: Longwood Gardens, 1001 Longwood Road, Kennett Square

Brandywine Museum of Art

People looking at artwork at the Brandywine River Museum of Art

The grounds are as breathtaking as the art at the bucolic Brandywine Museum of Art , housed in a renovated 1864 gristmill and surrounded by wildflower gardens and the meandering Brandywine River. Inside, works by Andrew Wyeth sit beside other beautifully detailed illustrations, paintings and installations, as well as special exhibitions that have showcased more works from the talented Wyeth family, photographs from the Civil Rights Movement and works by Winslow Homer.

Where: Brandywine Museum of Art, 1 Hoffmans Mill Road, Chadds Ford

Valley Forge National Historical Park

People walking through Valley Forget National Historical Park

No battles were fought in Valley Forge, but the time the Continental Army spent here went down as one of the Revolutionary War’s most trying periods. Today, Valley Forge National Historical Park sits on this site honoring those who helped secure freedom for the United States. Replicated huts and the original headquarters tell the story of the pivotal winter that George Washington and his troops endured, and a visitor center — renovated in 2021 and 2022 — includes artifacts and a lifesize statue of Washington. The 3,500-acre park also includes recreational trails, picnic areas and the grand National Memorial Arch .

Where: Valley Forge National Historical Park, 1400 N. Outer Line Drive, King of Prussia

Peddler's Village

With charming shops and boutiques (more than 60!), a dozen restaurants, the just-for-kids Giggleberry Fair indoor playscape, and festivals for every season (like Bluegrass & Blueberries, the Strawberry Festival and annual Peach Festival), Bucks County’s Peddler’s Village packs a surprising number of activities into its countryside landscape and winding brick walkways. Keep the fun going by grabbing a room for the night at charming on-site Golden Plough Inn.

Where: Peddler's Village, 2400 Street Road, New Hope

Sesame Place

Big Bird, Elmo and the other stars of Sesame Street come out and play at Sesame Place , one of only two theme parks in the nation featuring the popular television show’s most lovable characters. With three dozen kid-friendly rides, daily parades and engaging shows, everyone is invited to come and play where everything’s a-okay.

Where: Sesame Place, 100 Sesame Road, Langhorne

LEGOLAND Discovery Center

A family playing with legos at LEGOLAND Discovery Center

LEGOLAND Discovery Center is a 33,000-square-foot plastic-brick heaven featuring a LEGO-themed ride, 4D cinema and ten play areas, including a DUPLO Park for the toddler set. An onsite cafe and store ensure every LEGO-maniac walks away satisfied.

Where: LEGOLAND Discovery Center, 500 W. Germantown Pike, Plymouth Meeting

Fonthill Castle

A composite image of Fonthill Caslte in Doylestown. On the left, an exquisitely colored interior. On the right, two people sit on a bench on a clear blue day with the castle in the background.

Winding stairways, turrets and balconies give a 13th-century feel to eclectic 115-year-old Fonthill Castle (former home of renowned archeologist, anthropologist and ceramist Henry Chapman Mercer), which boasts 44 rooms, 32 stairwells and 200 windows housing Mercer’s massive collection of prints and ancient artifacts, as well as exquisite handmade tiles and mosaics from his adjacent Moravian Pottery and Tile Works .

Where: Fonthill Castle, 525 E. Court Street, Doylestown

Mercer Museum & James A. Michener Art Museum

People outside the Michener Art Museum

The towering citadel that houses the Mercer Museum is full of themed rooms dedicated to the tools and crafts of American life before mechanization, like a whaling boat and a Conestoga wagon. Across the street, Pennsylvania impressionist paintings take center stage at the Michener Art Museum , named for Pulitzer Prize-winning writer (and Doylestown native) James A. Michener. The galleries also host photography, sleek woodwork from nearby furniture maker George Nakashima Woodworkers, and other historical and contemporary works.

Where: Mercer Museum, 84 S. Pine Street, Doylestown

Michener Art Museum, 138 S. Pine Street, Doylestown

King of Prussia, a Simon Property Mall

Family shopping at King of Prussia Mall

With more than 450 stores (and over 50 eateries), King of Prussia, a Simon Property Mall is the premier shopping destination on the East Coast — and the third-largest mall in America. Find a nice mix of luxury, budget-friendly, national and international brands, as well as stores that cannot be found elsewhere in the region, all located just a 20-minute drive from Philadelphia.

Where: King of Prussia, a Simon Property Mall, 160 N. Gulph Road, King of Prussia

Morris Arboretum & Gardens

Designated Pennsylvania’s official state arboretum, Morris Arboretum & Gardens is a stunning nearly 100-acre oasis in beautiful Chestnut Hill . Its endless, multicolored flowering meadows feature more than 13,000 labeled plants and trees of over 2,500 types, including some of the oldest and rarest in the region. Highlights include the 135-year-old Rose Garden, the eight-sided Victorian glass fernery, the Dawn Redwoods forest and the whimsical Garden Railway.

Where: Morris Arboretum & Gardens, 100 E. Northwestern Avenue

Linvilla Orchards

Along Delaware County’s Main Line is Linvilla Orchards , a 300-acre working family farm dedicated not just to agriculture but education, entertainment and fun. Visitors can explore the Garden Center to pick seasonal fresh fruits and vegetables, meet the barnyard animals, cast a line for some fishing, play a round of mini-golf, enjoy a hayride, horse ride or train ride and even buy fresh baked pies to take home. And don’t miss Ship Bottom Brewery’s onsite beer garden.

Where: Linvilla Orchards, 137 W. Knowlton Road, Media

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art museum to visit in philadelphia

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Book the Visit Philly Overnight Package and get free hotel parking and choose-your-own-adventure perks, including tickets to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Franklin Institute, or the National Constitution Center and the Museum of the American Revolution.

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All art museums and attractions to visit in Philadelphia

Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) has a lot to offer for art lovers. Below we list all 18 art museums that are located in Philadelphia.

Do you like art and are you looking for the best art museums to visit in Philadelphia? These are the ones:

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Rodin Museum

Rodin Museum

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Barnes Foundation

Barnes Foundation

African American Museum In Philadelphia

African American Museum In Philadelphia

Institute of Contemporary Art

Institute of Contemporary Art

Philadelphia Center For Architecture

Philadelphia Center For Architecture

Mount Pleasant

Mount Pleasant

Philadelphia's Magic Gardens

Philadelphia's Magic Gardens

Powel House

Powel House

Hill-physick House

Hill-physick House

Portrait Gallery In the Second Bank

Portrait Gallery In the Second Bank

Perelman Building - Philadelphia Museum of Art

Perelman Building - Philadelphia Museum of Art

Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art

Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art

Rosenwald-wolf gallery, romanian folk art museum, la salle university art museum.

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60 Must-See Exhibitions to Visit This Spring

By Alex Greenberger

Alex Greenberger

Senior Editor, ARTnews

A temple whose architecture is covered in words interrupted by a large, multicolored blast.

The big themes of the spring season in the world of museums and biennials are migration and mutation. The former is the loose focus of this year’s edition of the Venice Biennale, the world’s biggest art festival, which will explore artists who live in diaspora. But it is also the subject of a range of retrospectives for artists whose work provides a rebuke to the notion of national borders as fixed, immutable things.

Transformation was a core component of Surrealism, an avant-garde that is turning 100 this year. It is, however, not the only movement celebrating an anniversary in 2024—Impressionism, the French movement launched in 1874, is now 150 years old. Both -isms are being toasted in big shows this season.

But it is not just living artists and modernists who are being feted. An Angelica Kauffman retrospective, long in the works, is finally here, and so is a restoration of a prized Jan van Eyck painting.

Below, a look at 60 must-see museum shows and biennials to visit this spring.

Gunter Brüs at Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria

A concrete wall hung with abstract paintings.

Gunter Brüs, an artist associated with the Viennese Actionist movement of the 1960s, unfortunately did not live to see the opening of this show. When he died earlier this month at 85, he was praised as a key performance artist whose painful provocations defined an era of Austrian art. In these works, Brüs would do violence to his own body; in one performance, he cut himself with razors to a point where he had to the end the piece because he was so physically exhausted. That work, titled The Real Test (1970), is no less intense when viewed 54 years on in the form of the photographic documentation that appears in the Kunsthaus Bregenz’s career-spanning survey, among the largest exhibitions ever devoted to him.

Through May 20

“Lala Rukh: In the Round” at Sharjah Art Foundation, United Arab Emirates

A black-and-white image of an ocean.

Much of Lala Rukh’s art is so spare that it borders on depicting nothing at all. The works for which she is best known—the ones that appeared in the 2017 edition of Documenta, the important art exhibition in Kassel, Germany—resemble notational systems that are based on the repetitive structures of music from the Indian subcontinent. But she also made works that looked quite unlike these: urgent posters about violence against women in her native country of Pakistan, photographs of beaches and oceans, and an animation featuring barely-there forms set against a black void, not to mention her activism with the Women’s Action Forum. Fittingly, Rukh’s first-ever survey lives up to its title by sampling all these various parts of her oeuvre together.

Through June 16

“IMAGINE! 100 Years of International Surrealism” at Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels

A painting of a nude woman hugging a sculpture of a nude man. Nearby her, a nude woman with a flower in front of her walks amid rocky terrain as a man in a bowler hat and a trench coat passes beside her. Around them are nondescript buildings.

With Surrealism turning 100 this year, museums are trotting out all their dreamy artworks related to that movement, which placed an emphasis on the subconscious, hidden desires, and sexual subversion. Among the biggest shows dedicated to Surrealism this year will be this survey, which, in keeping with other recent ones focused on that avant-garde, seeks to show that it did not only happen in France, with Belgians like René Magritte and Paul Delvaux having made their own significant contributions as well. In tribute to the Belgian strain of Surrealism, this show lures works by Dalí, Man Ray, and other giants to Brussels. Meanwhile, a show at the Bozar art center happening simultaneously looks specifically at Belgian Surrealism.

Through July 21

“Esther Mahlangu: Then I Knew I Was Good at Painting” at Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town

A Black woman in robes and sneakers seated in a chair before two abstract paintings.

Many of Esther Mahlangu’s abstractions are done in the style of traditional Ndebele painting, wherein members of her community array dazzling pigments to create starbursts and other forms. Yet Mahlangu, who is now in her late 80s and has been painting since she was 10, does not only paint on canvas—she has also adorned BMW cars, Belvedere vodka bottles, and Commes des Garçons garments. Having figured in the famed (and famously polarizing) 1989 exhibition “Magiciens de la Terre,” whose conception of global art remains influential, Mahlangu is now getting a 100-work retrospective in the same year that she figures in the Venice Biennale.

Through August 11

"Philippe Parreno: VOICES" at Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul

An installation featuring a Christmas tree with a blow-up fish suspended over it.

A typical Philippe Parreno show harnesses sculptures, video, sound, and more, all in search of ways to visualize the things we cannot see: time, the flow of life, the relationships between people and objects. What, exactly, is his Leeum Museum show? The museum describes it as “a synaesthetic exhibition of meticulously choreographed scenography combining data sequencing, DMX, and artificial intelligence that will expand perceptions on how to view and experience art and exhibitions.” Whatever that ultimately ends up being, it is likely to be just as cryptic and alluring as the rest of Parreno’s output.

February 28–July 7

Angelica Kauffman at Royal Academy of Arts, London

A painting of three white woman posed together. One holds a sheet of music while another holds a palette and points toward a temple in the distance. One in the middle clasps both of their hands.

One of the very few women associated with the Neoclassicist movement of the 18th century, Angelica Kauffman found fame during her lifetime with paintings that situated her moneyed commissioners within ancient settings. In so doing, the Swiss painter aided in the movement’s larger goal of returning order and modesty to art. But despite the fact that her history paintings were well-loved in her day, Kauffman does not currently occupy the same reputation as Neoclassicists such as Jacques-Louis David and Antonio Canova. That may soon change with this long-awaited showcase at the very institution which Kauffman helped to form.

March 1–June 30

“Lygia Clark: Project for a Planet” at Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo

An abstract painting composed of blue, grey, and white lines that appear to stutter.

The Brazilian artist Lygia Clark deliberately designed much of her output to be manipulated by its viewers. Her “Bichos” sculptures of the 1960s, for example, are metal contraptions that can be folded up and collapsed as desired; they count among the defining works of the Neo-Concretist movement, which sought to lure art into everyday life and explore how formal experiments in geography might function when viewed in the world at large. To that end, this 150-work retrospective will feature public activations of a variety of works by Clark, including the “Bichos.” Please do touch the art.

March 2–August 4

“Roy Lichtenstein: A Centennial Exhibition” at Albertina, Vienna

A painting of a white woman and a white man kissing before a pool of water that also appears to consume them. They are rendered comic book–style, with Ben Day dots left visible. Text beside that image reads 'WE ROSE UP SLOWLY ... AS IF WE DIDN'T BELONG TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD ANY LONGER ... LIKE SWIMMERS IN A SHADOWY DREAM ... WHO DIDN'T NEED TO BREATHE ...'

The Whitney Museum’s expansive Roy Lichtenstein retrospective is still two years off, but Europe is getting its own smaller show of the sort this spring. The exhibition will feature 90 works by the celebrated Pop artist, whose famed paintings of the 1960s import imagery from comic books and cast it a size so large, its Ben Day dots appear gigantic. In later works, Lichtenstein would apply a similar style to abstraction, parodying the obsession with originality that often accompanied painters who worked in that mode. A range of rising painters have mulled similar themes in recent years; the Albertina show should resonate in a climate where figuration is back in a big way.

March 8–July 14

“Delcy Morelos: Interwoven” at Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis

A two-panel artwork on wood stands with pink abstractions covering it.

These days, Delcy Morelos is well-known in parts of the US and Europe for epically scaled installations of sweetly pungent dirt. A new one will figure in this survey, but on the whole, the exhibition pulls back further, showing that before Morelos went big, she worked relatively small, creating paintings, drawings, and woven works. With their repetitive patterning and their spare visual language, they have a tendency to look like natural formations seen from afar. They meditate on the relationship between people and the natural environment around them—in particular to the Amazon, a region that has been key to the development of Colombia, where Morelos was born and is now based.

March 8–August 4

Nina Beier at CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux, France, and Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland

A porcelain sculpture of a Dachsund and porcelain vase that are smashed in parts.

The Danish-born sculptor Nina Beier specializes in creating cryptic assemblages that enlist everyday objects, only to render them bizarre: cups that pour beans into neat piles, for instance, or a porcelain sculpture of a dog with its face broken off. What, exactly, causes these pieces to be so memorable? It’s hard to say, yet the mystery and oddness of them nags at one’s memory. Fittingly, this mid-career survey is split across two institutions that are 2,000 miles apart from each other, rendering it unlikely that most viewers will ever be able to see the whole thing.

March 8–September 8; March 22–September 8

Biennale of Sydney

A computer-generated image of space filled with three fantastical orbs. The words 'Viral Pleasure World' wrap around one pink planet.

Twenty-four editions and fifty years on from its founding, the Biennale of Sydney remains Australia’s biggest art exhibition, and will once again prove its worth to the international scene with this show, curated by Cosmin Costinaș and Inti Guerrero. Their broad theme will be cosmological visions, with a special emphasis on the power of the sun and all that it brings to life as we know it. International stars, such as Monira Al Qadiri, Frank Bowling, Josh Kline, and Petrit Halilaj (working collaboratively with his partner Alvaro Urbano), will be present, but the focus, largely, is on homegrown talent, in particular First Nations artists awaiting greater recognition. Among them is Dylan Mooney, a Yuwi, Torres Strait and South Sea Islander artist who has been commissioned to make a work paying tribute to Malcolm Cole, an Aboriginal activist who gained attention among the queer community.

March 9–June 10

“Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists since 1940” at Modern Art Museum Fort Worth, Texas

A painting of winged creatures holding a bottle to a supine woman in a dark, candlelit setting.

Surrealism, the Martinican writer Suzanne Césaire famously said, “nourished in us an impatient strength, endlessly sustaining this massive army of negations.” There was no reason this European movement couldn’t apply to nations like hers, she claimed, because its emphasis on fantasies was already embedded in the Caribbean psyche. Her words have been proven true by the range of contemporary artists of the Caribbean and African diasporas, from Ana Mendieta to Naudline Pierre, that are assembled for this ambitious show. The exhibition proves that there is still more to understand about the legacy of Surrealism, which this year turns 100.

March 10–July 28

“Chantal Akerman: Traveling” at Bozar Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels

A white woman in a black sweater staring at the camera.

In 2023, Chantal Akerman received renewed attention after her 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles topped Sight and Sound ’s survey of the greatest movies of all time, beating out famed works by Yasujiro Ozu, Alfred Hitchcock, and others for the #1 spot. The film features a housewife who does nothing much at all for more than three hours—an endurance test that situates the viewer within her own sense of confinement. Now regarded as a feminist landmark, Jeanne Dielman remains thrilling, as does the rest of Akerman’s oeuvre, which takes up themes about displacement, alienation, and the relationships between women, all via long takes that encourage slow, meditative viewing. Her first-ever retrospective will feature documentation related to her movies, as well as installations, photography, and, naturally, her films themselves.

March 14–July 21

Yokohama Triennale

A blue-toned image of junked objects with a large red X over the image.

This triennial, among the biggest recurring art exhibitions in Japan, is this time named after poet Lu Xun’s 1927 anthology Wild Grasses , which was written amid a period of radical change for China. Viewing his poetry as a metaphor for the ways that delicate ecosystems continue to exist amid upheaval, curators Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu have organized a show about perseverance. Sandra Mujinga, Lieko Shiga, Josh Kline, Pippa Garner, and the late Pople.L are among those lined up to participate.

March 15–June 9

“Britta Marakatt-Labba. Moving the needle” at Nationalmuseum, Oslo

A painting of a flock of crows that transforms into a procession of people heading toward tents.

Britta Marakatt-Labba’s Historjá (2003–7), a 75-foot-long fabric piece that told the history of the Sámi, was one of the hits of Documenta 14, the 2017 edition of the famed art exhibition in Kassel, Germany. Yet it was but one example of the ways that Marakatt-Labba has forcefully, elegantly, evoked the dispossession of that Indigenous people and the violence done to nature via drawings and sewn works. This show aims to expose her full oeuvre, reaching as far back as the 1980s, when Marakatt-Labba produced embroideries that depicted standoffs between Sámi activists and the police. Naturally, Historjá will make a reappearance here, too.

March 15–August 25

“Joan Jonas: Good Night Good Morning” at Museum of Modern Art, New York

A person with their face covered standing in front of a giant projection of a starfish.

There are arguably few better-known video artists in the world than Joan Jonas, whose tapes from the ’60s and ’70s are considered crucial works about the relationship between one’s body and the environment, often with a feminist undercurrent. Having represented the United States at the 2015 Venice Biennale, Jonas has been written into art history of the past half-century, and her MoMA retrospective will only cement her place within the canon. Included in the exhibition will be a number of her video installations contending with hard-to-pin-down psychological states, natural phenomena, Japanese theatre traditions, and, of course, her beloved pet dogs. Jonas herself will also stage performances during the show’s run.

March 17–July 6

“Pierre Huyghe. Liminal” at Punta della Dogana, Venice

A screen showing ghostly computer-generated forms that is set within a forest.

Pierre Huyghe has made artworks using live bees, AI, and the dirt beneath a former ice skating rink, and is now set to do another flashy, grand project for the Punta della Dogana, one of two private museums in Venice operated by collector François Pinault. The show is being billed as Huyghe’s largest ever and is being teased as something that is neither a survey nor a retrospective, but something else altogether: a project that incorporates preexisting artworks into a larger ecosystem. His focus, as usual, will be the increasingly thin boundary between the human and the inhuman.

March 17–November 24

“Julie Mehretu: Ensemble” at Palazzo Grassi, Venice

An abstract painting composed of black lines that float amid a multihued background.

The togetherness referenced in this show’s title is an allusion to the fact that this show is not a solo survey for Julie Mehretu, or at least not in the conventional sense. There will indeed be 60 paintings and prints by Mehretu, an Ethiopian-born artist known for abstracting architectural plans and ready-made images, turning them into tangles of lines and colors that reference diasporas and political strife. But there will also be works by her colleagues, including Paul Pfeiffer, David Hammons, and Huma Bhabha, proving that Mehretu’s art thrives when it isn’t seen in isolation.

March 17, 2024–January 16, 2025

Whitney Biennial

A painting of a woman whose eyes are covered holding out her arms amid an abstract landscape.

The most important biennial held in the United States is poised to demonstrate its might once more with this year’s edition, the storied show’s 81st. As usual, a pair of curators—Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli, in this case—have been appointed to provide a broad picture of American art as it stands right now. Their focus is the notion of reality itself, a notoriously sticky subject in a time when the pressure is on to tell the truth and be authentic. Their 71-person list is dotted with beloved artists, from the esteemed abstractionist Mary Lovelace O’Neal to the up-and-coming sculptor Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio; it was assembled with the help of artists Korakrit Arunanondchai and asinnajaq, musician Taja Cheek, and filmmaker Zackary Drucker.

Opens March 20

“Meeting with a Masterpiece: The Virgin by Chancellor Rolin” at Musée du Louvre, Paris

A painting showing a madonna and child being blessed by an angel.

Jan van Eyck’s ca. 1435 painting The Virgin by Chancellor Rolin remains provocative for the way it situates an age-old subject—a Madonna and child—within a clearly contemporary world. And, while this painting has been seen widely, it turns out it can still be viewed anew—the Louvre, which owns it, just restored the work, revealing its original colors for the first time in years. To toast the painting’s refurbishment, the Louvre is assembling rarely traveled van Eycks that will elucidate the many ways this Flemish painter rendered his subjects with painstaking naturalism, an unusual quality for his day.

March 20–June 17

“Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within” at Noguchi Museum, New York

Two squat blue porcelain vessels.

The gorgeous, elegant ceramic forms Toshiko Takaezu crafted sometimes contain a secret: hidden within are objects that produce pleasing sounds, if their holders are shaken gently. But their containers have largely remained motionless, lending them a stilled, muted quality. Their intrigue will be evident in this long-overdue retrospective for Takaezu, an artist born in Hawai‘i to Japanese parents. The show seeks to expose unseen parts of Takaezu’s art, including her little-known paintings, and will also play up the importance of sound to her art, with a dedicated concert program designed by Leilehua Lanzilotti, who also curated the exhibition with art historian Glenn Adamson and the Noguchi Museum’s Kate Wiener.

March 20–July 28

“Rosana Paulino: Amefricana” at Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires

A triptych in which the middle panel is an image of a Black woman superimposed with a bone. Sewn to either side are white panels that repeatedly bear the phrse 'O AMOR PELA CIÊNCIA?'

The title of this survey for Rosana Paulino, a giant of the Brazilian art scene, is a reference to a concept thought up by Lélia González, an intellectual who postulated that those in power in Brazil sought to ignore Black and Indigenous citizens because they dont see them as Latin enough. Similar themes have guided Paulino’s practice, which view the experiences of Africans as being integral to Brazilian history. Centered around five large-scale installations dealing with the subject, this exhibition is Paulino’s first comprehensive survey outside her home country.

March 22–June 10

“Francis Bacon: The Beauty of Meat” at Museu de Arte de São Paulo

A white man seated in a gallery with paintings around him.

That Francis Bacon was gay is no secret—Mark Swan and Annalyn Swan’s recent biography of the British painter focuses in detail on his relations with men. But when it comes to major exhibitions of Bacon’s art in mainstream museums, his sexual identity is typically downplayed in favor of broader emphases on his turbulent psychological state. That will not be the case in this exhibition, mounted as part of a year’s worth of programming at MASP dedicated to under-recognized queer histories. Curated by Adriano Pedrosa, who is also organizing the Venice Biennale, the show is about the relationship between the male body and Bacon’s paintings of meat and carnage.

March 22–July 28

"Damien Hirst: To Live Forever (A While)" at Museo Jumex, Mexico City

A shark suspended in a box filled with formaldehyde.

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), a famed sculpture of a full-size shark suspended in a pool of formaldehyde, remains Damien Hirst’s calling card. But the title of this 60-work Hirst survey suggests that not all of his work is actually about mortality (or some subversion of it), and the offerings on hand, from his “Spin Paintings” to wall-mounted sculptures resembling medicine cabinets, imply that there is still more to learn about an artist whose output remains most closely associated with the excesses of the market.

March 23–August 25

“Hu Yun: Mount Analogue” at Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai

A canvas stitched with red thread.

The young Chinese artist Hu Yun has made a habit of studying historical happenings in depth, then creating installations that attest to the movements of people and ideas across time. This show, his first museum survey, is an excavation of the past in more senses than one. It will specifically take up the ghosts of the very building that houses the Rockbund Art Museum, which once belonged to the Royal Asiatic Society Museum, a natural history institution that counted among the first of its kind in China. The two-floor installation that Hu has devised will look at some of the destructive qualities inherent in that institution, which the artist has labeled an “expansive knowledge apparatus.”

“Joyce J. Scott: Walk a Mile in My Dreams” at Baltimore Museum of Art

A beaded sculpture showing a nude Black man crawling a way from a giant slice of watermelon that engulfs his feet.

Many of Joyce J. Scott’s sculptures are intricate and gorgeous, yet they also contain tough material about the painful histories of racism woven into them—literally. A good number of her pieces enlist beading, glasswork, and sewing, raising craft techniques to the status of what has commonly been regarded as “high” art. One of the most important artists to emerge from Baltimore’s art scene in the past half-century, Scott is finally getting a retrospective in her hometown museum, where she will exhibit lesser-known pieces, such as ephemera related to performances staged during the 1970s, as well as a newly commissioned installation.

March 24–July 14

“Paris 1874. The Impressionist Moment” at Musée d’Orsay, Paris

A painting of a group of men in top hats amid costumed people.

As far as exhibitions mounted to mark the 150th anniversary of Impressionism, none will be bigger than this show, which explores how the movement came together in the first place. Most often, Impressionism is thought to have emerged as a reaction to the academic Salon culture of the 19th-century French art scene. But this show suggests that when painters like Claude Monet and Edgar Degas began painting outside their studios, breaking a taboo for the time, they were also pushed to do so by a political climate that demanded an entirely new understanding of artmaking altogether. The exhibition is almost certain to bring in droves of people in Paris, just as it will in Washington, D.C., where the exhibition travels in September.

March 26–July 14

“Brancusi” at Centre Pompidou, Paris

A sculpted head in gold turned on its side.

The Centre Pompidou is uniquely equipped to stage a bang-up Constantin Brancusi retrospective, since the museum’s sprawling grounds include a structure that recreates the Romanian-born modernist’s studio in all its glory. This spring, that atelier will act as an appetizer to this epically scaled show, which assembles nearly 200 of Brancusi’s sculptures, which are prized for distilling well-trodden art-historical subjects to their most basic elements—a bird in flight, for example, represented only as a curved golden arc set atop a pedestal. Alongside the sculptures, there will be films, archival materials (including Brancusi’s tools), photographs, furniture, and more related to his art.

March 27–July 1

Nari Ward at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan

A cradle strung up with multihued thread. The assemblage also ensnares many other unidentifiable objects.

When it comes to this Jamaican-born, New York–based artist, the focus is almost always how he makes haunting use of found materials—a disused hearse, tossed-out strollers, shoelaces, all employed to imbue old objects with new life. But for this retrospective, the focus will be how Ward’s sculptural installations contain performance-oriented elements that are not always immediately obvious. Central to the exhibition, which will feature new works, will be a grouping of installations that Ward initially produced between 1996 and 2000 for Ralph Lemon’s Geography Trilogy , a group of dance pieces that explore how memories are communicated through movement.

March 28–July 28

Pino Pascali at Fondazione Prada, Milan

A furry sculpture of a spider looming above a man with his legs bent over his head.

“I do not believe you make shows in galleries, you make the gallery, you create the space,” artist Pino Pascali once said. Accordingly, this 50-work show is an untraditional retrospective for a sculptor who worked in an untraditional way. Rather than chronologically presenting Pascali’s sculptures, which, like others associated with the Arte Povera movement of 1960s Italy, merge manmade and natural materials, the exhibition will slice his practice in different ways. One will explore how Pascali, who died at age 32 in a motorcycle accident, approached his exhibitions, viewing them as environments in their own right that he could manipulate accordingly.

March 28–September 23

“André Masson: There Is No Finished World” at Centre Pompidou-Metz, France

A painting of a reclining figure whose body is abstracted and contorted. The body rests with one bared food on a broken piece of stone in a setting that recalls a red crypt.

Before André Breton wrote his “Surrealist Manifesto” in 1924, André Masson made the first of his automatic drawings in 1923. Automatism, as Masson devised it, was a kind of mark-making dictated by the subconscious, without any predetermined composition in mind. But Masson was more than automatism, and this retrospective seeks out to prove it. Among the lesser-known parts his oeuvre surveyed will be the works made when he visited Martinique in 1940, luring some of the lush flora seen there into his drawings from around the same time.

March 29–September 2

Kathe Köllwitz at Museum of Modern Art, New York

A woodcut print showing two figures holding each other in grief. It consists of black ink on yellowed paper.

Kathe Köllwitz is a hero for many artists active today for the way she dealt head-on with social issues of her day, working in a manner that was blindly direct—even by the standards of the current moment. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Köllwitz crafted paintings, drawings, and prints that responded to a war-torn, chaotic Germany, often directing her attention specifically to plight of women and workers. Crucially, she worked in a figurative mode, even as others around her turned to abstraction, and for that reason, these pieces are just as piercing now as they were then. Many of them have not been seen frequently in New York, making this retrospective an important one for audiences in the city.

March 31–July 20

“Patrick Martinez: Histories” at Dallas Contemporary

A predominantly pink painting of a graffitied wall with a sharp-toothed creature situated above lettering in both Chinese and English. A piece of the work hangs off it, and there are cacti crafted from green lights inset in it.

Recently, a suite of neon sculptures by Patrick Martinez graced the lobby of the Whitney Museum, where their phrases urging protest in the face of injustice glowed with a certain intensity. Those sculptures looked like the signs used to advertise stores on city streets, and that is in some ways the point. Martinez, a rising talent based in Los Angeles, has formed an oeuvre from bringing the urban landscape into art spaces, crafting paintings that look like graffiti or walls plastered with posters, all while also paying homage to Latinx culture in the city he calls home. In so doing, he implies that there can be no division between art and daily life, a proposition that will resound among the new and recent works surveyed here.

April 3–September 1

Firelei Báez at Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

A silhouette of a woman whose eyes are left visible. Her curly hair turns multicolored hues. The background is pink.

In 2021, Firelei Báez filled the ICA Boston’s Watershed space with what appeared to be the ruins of a sunken castle, covering the gallery’s windows with blue tarp. This faux underwater archaeological site was, in fact, a reference to the Sans-Souci Palace, where Haitian royalty lived after the island country gained independence from its French colonizers. That work was example of how Báez has animated the seemingly dead past, paying homage to her own Haitian and Dominican heritage in the process. Her first North American survey will include paintings and sculptures, plus a return to watery subject matter in the form of a newly commissioned mural that will consider Boston’s own maritime history.

April 4–September 2

“Nicholas Mangan: A World Undone” at Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney

A rectangular object lit blue.

For the past three years, Australian artist Nicholas Mangan has been exploring the damage being done at a concerning pace to the Great Barrier Reef, whose coral is quickly receding due to climate change. For a series known as “Core-Corelations,” Mangan has crafted tombs of a sort for dead coral; the boxes are found ones form of polystyrene, a common material used in packing that is notoriously tough to degrade. Works from that series will figure in this survey, which also includes more videos and sculptures dealing with impending environmental doom.

April 5–June 30

“Hiroshige’s 100 Famous Views of Edo (feat. Takashi Murakami)” at Brooklyn Museum, New York

A woodblock print showing mountains seen from high above, with leaves hanging in the foreground. The mountains are pictured at sunset.

Among the Brooklyn Museum’s crown jewels is its complete set of Utagawa Hiroshige’s “100 Famous Views of Edo” (1856–59), a group of woodblock prints depicting the Japanese city across the seasons: snowy bridges, the bay at sunset, trees in bloom. But for 24 years, it has been impossible to see all of the Brooklyn Museum’s prints—until now. This show brings together the complete set, complementing it with a contemporary flourish in the form of works by Takashi Murakami, who is known for his extravagant paintings and sculptures that bring traditional Japanese imagery into a new age.

April 5–August 4

“Liliane Lijn. Arise Alive” at Haus der Kunst, Munich

Two abstract sculptures, with a laser pointing from one red and blue one onto another whose yellow parts resemble wings.

While many male artists in New York during the 1970s were making muscular, grand installations from industrial materials, Liliane Lijn, working in the United Kingdom, struck out in a different mode, creating abstract glass sculptures that were meant to represent goddesses. Her goal, she said, was to “reinvest the feminine with spiritual power.” By this point, Lijn had made motorized sculptures that turned on their own accord, going against the notion that works in that medium ought to remain static; she would go on to produce more multimedia pieces that continued to explore the very nature of light itself. Always a rulebreaker, Lijn will at long last get a big retrospective.

April 5–September 22

“Creative Growth: The House That Art Built” at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

A painting of a large ape towering over New York City.

Quietly, the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, California, has been helping to shape the American art scene, providing people with developmental disabilities a shot at an artist career. The center made possible the work of Judith Scott and Dan Miller, both of whom have been roundly praised, and in a sign of its impact, SFMOMA acquired dozens of works from Creative Growth to mark the organization’s 50th anniversary. This show brings together more than 80 of those works, plus a newly commissioned William Scott painting that will include “map-like renderings of San Francisco and portraits of the people who populate his life and dreams,” per the museum.

April 6–October 6

“Sandra Vásquez de la Horra: The Awake Volcanoes” at Denver Art Museum

A drawing of a nude female figure in a skirt with a mask bound to the back of her hair. Her face is missing. That figure sits on top of a bent-over female figure, whose hair the unmasked one pulls. Around these two figures is red text reading 'EL IDEAL DE UN CALAVERA.'

Hot off appearing in the 2022 Venice Biennale, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra is getting her first US survey with this exhibition featuring some 193 of her drawings, sculptures, and photographs. Born in Chile and based in Germany, Vásquez de la Horra often blends Latin American mythology and European artistic tradition, typically creating images of women engaged in a dreamy communion with the natural environment. More often than not, the people she represents hover between this world and another imagined one, with traits that cause them to appear more like fantastical beings.

April 7–July 21

“I Am Copying Nobody: The Art and Political Cartoons of Akinola Lasekan” at Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

A painting of a smiling Black woman in a purple turban.

This Nigerian artist, a figure associated with the growth of a modernist art scene in the country, is little-known in the US, though this exhibition seems poised to change that. The drawings, paintings, and political cartoons here attest to how Lasekan harnessed Western modes of art-making to speak to a Nigerian audience, depicting the people around him and critiquing those in power in the process. The Chrysler show is staged in partnership with the Hampton University Museum in Virginia and is focused specifically on works previously owned by the Harmon Foundation, a now-defunct organization that supported Black artists during the mid-20th century, at a time when they did not receive as much attention from the nation’s biggest museums.

April 13–August 11

“Jean Cocteau: The Juggler’s Revenge” at Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

A painting of two people with bulging eyes ascending staircases that bend in space.

Many modernists were at odds with the multihyphenate Jean Cocteau, even as he sought their approval: Pablo Picasso worked with him on a number of theatrical productions, but dodged his attempts at closer friendship frequently; André Breton famously despised Cocteau, despite the latter having been classified as a Surrealist himself. Consider this retrospective Cocteau’s belated retribution, then. With paintings, films, books, photographs, jewelry, drawings, and more, this show asserts Cocteau as an integral figure of modernism, with plenty to say about changing sexual mores and subconscious desires.

April 13–September 16

“Space Makers: Indigenous Expression and a New American Art” at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas

An abstract painting.

While a spate of recent surveys have focused on Indigenous artists active right now, this show reaches back further, zeroing in on a postwar movement called the Indian Space Painters. These artists looked to the gestural brushwork of the Abstract Expressionists and found that it actually had a lot to do with Native American styles of centuries past. White painters had previously sourced inspiration from Haida and Tlingit art for their abstractions; the Indian Space Painters cultivated a closer relationship to that material. The show also brings the Indian Space painters into the present, suggesting that their art shares commonalities with that of younger artists such as Dyani White Hawk, whose beaded abstractions merge European modernism and Indigenous craftwork.

April 13–September 30

“Willem de Kooning e l’Italia” at Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice

An abstract painting formed from smeary mixtures of blue, white, pink, and red strokes.

Willem de Kooning is typically thought of as being synonymous with the American art scene, in particular the New York School of the postwar era, but this show stakes a claim for Italy as one of his prime inspirations. The Abstract Expressionist stayed in Italy in 1959 and 1969—during the former time, he was put up in painter Afro Basaldella’s Roman studio—and continued to paint, sculpt, and draw all the while, spinning sights seen in the capital city and Spoleto into abstraction. Yet the show includes works made well into the 1980s, the implication being that de Kooning’s Italian sojourns had an impact that lasted for the whole of his career.

April 17–September 15

“Caspar David Friedrich: Infinite Landscapes” at Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

A group of people seen from behind, sitting on mossy rocks on a shore at sunset. Ahead of them are ships sailing out to sea.

A year of Caspar David Friedrich intended to mark the 250th anniversary of the Romantic painter’s birth continues on in Germany with this survey, which includes 60 paintings by the artist. Many of those images situate small figures against vast vistas that engulf them; the mountains, icebergs, and waterfalls represented are by turns beautiful and horrifying in their intensity. In its first eight weeks alone, another Friedrich blockbuster, now on view at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, was seen by 157,000 people. It’s a fair bet that this show will also be seen in droves.

April 19–August 4

“Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective” at Art Institute of Chicago

A painting of a crouched over female figure whose face extends beyond the work's frame. She wears lingerie, and her body appears to contort.

The late, great Chicago artist Christina Ramberg was a true art-historical whatsit, conforming to no specific movement or group while also devising an aesthetic unique to herself. Her figurative paintings from the ’70s are dreamy and bizarre; they feature contorted female bodies, misshapen hands knotted with fabric, and genderless garments that appear to have dissolved into their wearers. To top it off, Ramberg quit painting for quilt-making in the ’80s, moving her practice in an entirely different direction in her career’s final stages. Remarkably, this 100-work retrospective is her first major one in the United States in 30 years.

April 20–August 11

“Zilia Sánchez: Toplogias / Topologies” at Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami

An abstract painting showing a white plane intersected by arrows and other forms scrawled in black.

This Cuban-born, Puerto Rico–based artist, now nearing 100, has only garnered more widespread acclaim in recent years for her abstract paintings stretched across wooden constructions. These paintings, which often pay homage to women across time, are beguiling to behold: they are taut, gorgeous, and unlike many other shaped canvases of the past half-century. Her ICA Miami survey includes some of these works, as well as early works made in Havana, where Sánchez aided in creating a turn away from figurative, naturalistic imagery. The show opens on the same day as the Venice Biennale, where Sánchez’s art will also be on view.

April 20–October 13

Venice Biennale

An abstract pattern formed from many shaking lines in different hues.

Curator Adriano Pedrosa has been influential for the programming he has devised for the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, where he has organized lauded shows such as “Afro-Atlantic Histories.” Now, he will bring his trailblazing sensibility to the Venice Biennale, the world’s biggest art festival. With 331 artists included, his exhibition, titled “Foreigners Everywhere” and focused on artists who crossed borders, is set to be sprawling and vast. Notably, it includes not just today’s most important artists, but yesterday’s as well, with an emphasis on figures like Pacita Abad, Bertina Lopes, and Freddy Rodriguez, who hailed from the Global South and found a following outside the countries in which they were born.

April 20–November 24

“Theaster Gates: Afro-Mingei” at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

24 April 2019, Berlin: Photographs by Moneta Sleet Jr. (M) and Isaac Sutton (l and r) can be seen in the exhibition "The Black Image Corporation" in the Martin-Gropius-Bau behind a showcase with editions of the magazine "Ebony". The exhibition, designed by Theaster Gates, focuses on the work of the two photographers Moneta Sleet Jr. and Isaac Sutton. (Wiping effect due to long exposure time) Photo: Christoph Soeder/dpa (Photo by Christoph Soeder/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Within the US, where he is based, Theaster Gates is well-loved for taking up ready-made materials related to the Black experience—a piano, a disused bank, the archives of the magazine Ebony —and imbuing them with new life. A lesser-known part of his practice is his pottery produced in response to his travels in Japan, where has studied the mingei movement, which, in the 20th century, sought to uphold craft objects as being different from, and in some ways equally as important as, pieces that are commonly regarded as artworks. Gates has revived that theory with his own take on it, known as “Afro-Mingei,” which infuses the concept with an emphasis on Black identity. Gates’s sculptures owing their ideas to Japanese culture will form the bulk of this exhibition, which marks his big introduction to the country.

April 24–September 1

“Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter, and the Blue Rider” at Tate Modern, London

A painting of a girl holding a toddler beside flowers.

The Blue Rider of this show’s title refers to the horse-and-rider motif that recurred regularly throughout Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc’s works of the 1910s, which are filled with fabulously colored imagery that looks quite unlike life itself. For Kandinsky, Marc, Gabriele Münter, and others in their circle, that was very much the point—they, along with the other movement known as German Expressionism, wanted to leap into the fray and create a new kind of imagery that bore little relation to reality. How those artists went about achieving their aesthetic goals is the subject of this survey featuring a heaping of works from Munich’s Lenbachhaus museum that rarely travel.

April 25–October 20

Petrit Halilaj at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A giant sculpture of a flower hanging from the ceiling of an open atrium whose walls are also hung with large flowers and a structure recalling the wooden armature of a house.

Following a grand survey at the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City, Kosovo-born phenom Petrit Halilaj will take over the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, mounting a newly commissioned installation. His past pieces—many of them hits with critics when they’ve appeared at international biennials—have taken up his Kosovar heritage and his feelings of displacement abroad, where his home country is not always recognized as a legitimate nation. But his work is never negative and is, if anything, hopeful, enlisting blooming flowers, bird-like creatures, and more in his sculptures and installations. His Met commission is likely to expand on that imagery.

April 30–October 27

“June Clark: Witness” at the Power Plant, Toronto

A photograph of a Black girl and a Black man attached to a piece of crimson fabric that covers a white table whose legs are cracked.

Toronto is having something of a June Clark moment, with the Art Gallery of Ontario having opened a small presentation of her work this winter, followed by this show opening in May, which is billed as her first survey in the country she now calls home. Long based in Harlem before departing for Canada in 1968 while New York was roiled by protest, Clark, now in her 80s, has considered how seemingly inanimate objects hold living memories. Early photo-based work will appear in this show alongside more recent installations, assemblages, collages, sculptures, and more.

May 3–August 11

“Ana Lupas: On This Side of the River Elbe” at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

An installation composed of coats hanging on an orange armature.

In 1970, Ana Lupas enlisted a bunch of women living in rural Romania to hang wet linens across lines and allow the sheets to dry. That work, titled Humid Installation , was among Lupas’s first major statements about female forms of labor as seen through the handling of fabrics and clothes. Since then, Lupas has created installations, sculptures, and more that make visible the unseen networks formed among women. Finally, this octogenarian artist is getting a comprehensive survey that aims to uphold her as one of the finest artists to emerge from Eastern Europe in the past half-century.

May 9–September 15

“LaToya Ruby Frazier: Monuments of Solidarity” at Museum of Modern Art, New York

Two Black women posed so that one is shown from the side and the other is shown dead-on, staring at the camera. The one facing away has her eye closed and wears a floral-print shirt. They are photographed before a curtain.

The water crisis afflicting the predominantly Black populace of Flint, Michigan, is tough to visualize, but one of the reasons the larger public knows about it at all is through LaToya Ruby Frazier’s photographs, which searingly, tenderly depict the disturbed daily lives of the city’s residents. Working within a tradition seeded by American photojournalists from the first half of the 20th century, Frazier has memorably turned her lens on union members and her own family, and has explored how communities keep each other alive in the face of racism and other forms of prejudice. She views these pictures as monuments to individuals, and for this MoMA survey that revisits those bodies of work, she will also debut a new photographic series paying homage to the labor activist Dolores Huerta.

May 12–September 7

“Reynaldo Rivera: Fistful of Love/También la Belleza” at MoMA PS1, New York

A black-and-white photograph of a waiting room with a person at a desk. A TV set closer to the camera plays a pixelated image of a woman's face.

Reynaldo Rivera’s grainy black-and-white photographs of Mexican American culture in Los Angeles contain a blunt force, even when their subjects—nightlife and drunken revelry, predominantly—are seemingly banal. “It’s hard not to cry,” critic Christina Catherine Martinez once wrote of these works. It has been an unlikely journey for Rivera, who, after living itinerantly in California and Mexico as a kid, ended up in LA and taught himself photography. With his institutional bona fides now firmly secured following an appearance in the 2020 edition of the Hammer Museum’s taste-making Made in L.A. biennial, Rivera is now having his first solo museum show, which will include never-before-seen pictures.

May 16–September 9

Ghislaine Leung at Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland

A white columned interior with a pipe running through it.

In her current exhibition at the Renaissance Society in Chicago, Ghislaine Leung is showing a work called Jobs (2024), which takes the form of a sheet of paper that rattles off all the positions the artist has held, from babysitter to mother. It looks little like an artwork at all, and that, in some ways, is its larger point: to visualize how art exhibitions are the result of many kinds of labor that often go unseen. Though highly conceptual in nature, Leung’s work has received wide acclaim, earning her a Turner Prize nomination last year. As her star ascends, she will create a site-specific project for the Kunsthalle Basel, ensuring that it will be one of the most widely seen shows mounted during Art Basel—even if it does end up containing few Instagram-worthy objects.

May 17–August 11

“Jenny Holzer: Light Line” at Guggenheim Museum, New York

A rotunda with text displayed on screens running up its interior.

Among the most famous transformations of the Guggenheim Museum’s rotunda was one that Jenny Holzer produced in 1989, in which cryptic phrases in LED lights crawled up the institution’s spiraling ramp. “YOU ARE A VICTIM OF THE RULES YOU LIVE BY,” one of those phrases read. Thirty-five years on, similar ones will likely appear once more in the Guggenheim, where Holzer is now set to revisit her 1989 installation, this time through the lens of 2024. Naturally, that means she will be using AI, which will help Holzer author her mysterious words.

May 17–September 29

“Vaginal Davis: Magnificent Production” at Moderna Museet, Stockholm

A Black woman staring at the camera with her mouth open and her eyes open wide.

Theorist José Esteban Muñoz once said that artist Vaginal Davis enacts “terrorist drag,” a reference to the ways that her music, performances, and films flout gender norms in ways that can sometimes be unpalatable. Having come up in the punk scene, Davis is now a fixture in the mainstream art world, producing work that considers resistance to racists, misogynists, and homophobes. And in keeping with Davis’s emphasis on art that resists being pinned down, this show is technically spread across multiple Swedish museums in addition to the Moderna Museet, all of which will showcase a different portion of her output.

May 17–October 13

“OSGEMEOS: Endless Story” at Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.

A painting of a person holding a guitar beside a Brown boy leaping ahead beside a dog with its tongue out. The arid landscape includes a church with a megaphone at its top and a gallows-like structure with books hanging from it. A moon above has a smiling face, and on its tip is a little house.

If you have encountered an OSGEMEOS painting, it has likely been outside—and not inside—a museum; that’s one reason this institutional survey is notable. Another is the show’s size, at 1,000 works, which perhaps the best way to represent just how prolific this Brazilian duo, a pair of twins hailing from São Paulo, has been over the past few decades. Having started as break-dancers, Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo turned to street art in the late ’80s, and have since then been envisioning dreamy worlds unrelated to ours that are populated by their signature jaundiced figures. Will their work avoid getting lost in translation and becoming a victim of a KAWS effect plaguing museums today? The show will prove a crucial test.

May 18–July 6

“Mary Cassatt at Work” at Philadelphia Museum of Art

A painting of a white woman grasping a white girl's arm as she caresses her face.

Think of laborers represented in French art of the Impressionist era, and you may come up with a work like Gustave Caillebotte’s Floor Scrapers (1875), in which a group of workers are shown on their hands and knees in a bourgeois apartment. Yet there are forms of labor that look quite unlike that one, and this show pays mind to a vastly different one: motherhood, a frequent subject for the American Impressionist Mary Cassatt. Her tender paintings of matriarchs and their children will appear here alongside pieces depicting women reading and embroidering, marking a major attempt to expand on prior feminist studies of Cassatt.

May 18–September 8

“Mickalene Thomas: All About Love” at the Broad, Los Angeles

A collaged image of a Black woman holding a mirror.

In Mickalene Thomas’s paintings, Black women stare back proudly and assuredly, ensconced in domestic settings that fracture into mismatched planes. The style is more than simply an allusion to Cubism and other modernist movements—it suggests, and demands, that viewers must see these women from many angles, as though they were too complex to be seen in just one way. Studded with rhinestones and beloved by many, these paintings will figure in an 80-work Thomas survey that aspires to assert her as an essential artist of our current moment. The show was organized by the Broad with the Hayward Gallery, and done in partnership with the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia; it will travel to those venues after its run in Los Angeles.

May 25–September 29

Brugal Just Dropped a Tasty New Rum Aged in Toasted Sherry Casks

Marimekko targets u.s., asia-pacific markets for growth, scientists hit major breakthrough in push for off-the-shelf cancer therapy, dartmouth basketball team votes to unionize in college sports first, this best-selling magnetic rowing machine is $185 off on amazon today.

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Museum of the American Revolution, Please Touch Museum make USA TODAY's 10Best list

art museum to visit in philadelphia

USA TODAY readers have spoken, naming four Philadelphia museums to USA TODAY's " 10Best " list of museums.

Readers chose the Franklin Institute, The Museum of the American Revolution, the Please Touch Museum and the Wagner Free Institute of Science as among the ten best in the nation.

Every week, USA Today invites a panel of industry experts to nominate their favorite points of interest and attractions across a wide range of categories.

The voting public then had four weeks to choose their favorite museums.

Here's why these Philadelphia museums ranked among the nation's best.

The Franklin Institute merges science, history

The Franklin Institute , located at 222 N. 20th. St., opened on Jan. 1, 1934, and holds the distinction of being Pennsylvania's most visited museum, placing it among USA TODAY's ten best museums .

The Franklin Institute's a hands-on science museum that seeks to create a passion for science and tech in everyone. The Franklin Institute features many interactive exhibits that explore science — from sports to space — plus top-notch experiences and special exhibitions.

'Art of the Brick' at Franklin Institute World-renown LEGO artist Nathan Sawaya comes to the Delaware Valley

Museum of the American Revolution nestled in birthplace of American history

The Museum of the American Revolution, at 101 S. Third Street in Philadelphia, is one of the newer museums on USA TODAY's "10Best" list , having opened on April 19, 2017. It is situated near Independence Mall, the Liberty Bell and National Constitution Center.

"The new landmark, which has already welcomed more than a million visitors, provides a permanent home for the museum’s rich collection of Revolutionary-era weapons, personal items, letters, diaries, and works of art," read a statement on the Museum of the American Revolution's website . "Immersive galleries, theater experiences, life-sized tableau scenes, and recreated historical environments bring to life the events, people, and ideals of our nation’s founding and engage people in the history and continuing relevance of the American Revolution."

Durham native hero of the Revolution: Bucks historians ranked this Durham native second only to George Washington as a war hero

Please Touch Museum a haven for children to explore their imagination

The Please Touch Museum , located in Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park, at 4231 Avenue of the Republic, is one of a handful of museums geared toward children to make USA TODAY's Ten Best list .

"Please Touch Museum’s mission is to change a child’s life as they discover the power of learning throughplay," read a portion of a press release from the Please Touch Museum. "Accredited by the American Alliance of Museums and recognized locally and nationally as one of the best children’s museums in the United States."

To that end, the Please Touch Museum recently opened the " Namaste India " traveling exhibit, which runs through May 5.

“We are honored to welcome Namaste India, developed by our colleagues at The Magic House, St. Louis Children’s Museum in partnership with the St. Louis Indian community, to celebrate Indian culture and community," said Please Touch Museum President and CEO Patricia D. Wellenbach in a press release. "This traveling exhibit advances our year-long theme, A Playful World, by providing purposeful learning opportunities that are approachable and filled with wonder for young children and families.”

Wagner Free Institute of Science a force for public education

Incorporated in 1855 and located at 1700 W. Montgomery Ave., the Wagner Free Institute of Science makes USA TODAY's "Ten Best" museums list , in part due to its collection of natural history specimens.

Should have made the cut: 5 more Bucks County spots we wish made USA TODAY's 2024 Restaurants of the Year list

The Wagner Free Institute of Science is housed in a soaring three-story exhibition hall, and much of the collection is laid out as it would have been during the Victorian era, complete with cherry wood and glass cabinets dating back to the 1880s.

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Things to do this weekend Philadelphia: East Passyunk Restaurant Week, Philadelphia Flower Show, Art Museum

By Jessica MacAulay, Frederick Sinclair, CBS News Philadelphia Staff

Updated on: March 2, 2024 / 3:48 PM EST / CBS Philadelphia

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Cheers to the weekend Philly! The weekend is finally here and the greater Philadelphia area has several reasons for you to celebrate! Whether you're in the mood to try out a new dish (or dishes) at East Passyunk Restaurant Week or maybe looking to be blown away at the Philadelphia Flower Show , the Delaware Valley is the exact place you'll want to be this weekend!

Philadelphia area events, festivals, screenings this weekend

East passyunk restaurant week 2024.

For the 12th time, Restaurant Week is returning to  East Passyunk  in South Philadelphia.

From Monday, Feb. 26, to Friday, March 8, more than 20 award-winning restaurants will participate in  East Passyunk Restaurant Week . They will offer specially priced three-course prix fixe lunch and dinner menus for $20, $30, $40 and $55.

Dishes will range from signature long-term favorites to exclusive new items making their Restaurant Week debut.

Participating restaurants this year will include:

  • Barcelona Wine Bar
  • Bing Bing Dim Sum
  • Cantina Los Caballitos
  • Ember & Ash
  • Gabriella's Vietnam
  • Juana Tamale
  • Noir Restaurant
  • Ocho Rios Parrilla
  • Pistolas Del Sur
  • Pizzata Pizzeria & Birreria
  • P'unk Burger
  • Pub on Passyunk East
  • Stogie Joe's
  • The Palace of Indian
  • Townsend Wine Bar
  • Triangle Tavern

Discover Boating Atlantic City Boat Show

Boats, boats, boats! If you're dreaming of spring and summer, set course this weekend to the 2024 Atlantic City Boat Show at the Atlantic City Convention Center. The Discover Boating Atlantic City Boat Show kicked off Wednesday and will be in town until Sunday, March 3. 

Those interested in attending can check out hundreds of vessels on display and purchase their dream boat if they desire. Attendees can also see Twiggy, the iconic waterskiing squirrel in action in her own custom-built heated pool. A wide variety of fishing and boating seminars available can also teach nautical fans a tip or trick about sea life. 

Sea lovers can check out the show from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. this Sunday.

Admission ticket prices vary depending on how many people are in your group. Individual tickets start at $18 each. Big time bonus, too, if you plan to bring your children! The show allows free entry for children 12 years old and under with a paid adult.

Philadelphia Flower Show

It's a telltale sign that spring is right around the corner in the Delaware Valley. The 2024 Philadelphia Flower Show is back in town and ready to celebrate our city's Brotherly Love in its latest theme, "United By Flowers." Beyond the extravagant flower creations, guests can shop from a variety of local vendors at the event's marketplace. 

This year's marketplace will feature more than 150 vendors that sell everything from the perfect little plant to add to your garden to household kitchen decor, clothing, jewelry and accessories! The flower show also offers a variety of tours and activities for families and children to enjoy while embracing true Philadelphia flower power.

You can catch this year's flower show from March 2 to 9, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Sunday, March 10, the last day of the show will have slightly shorter hours -- 10 a.m. until 6 p.m.

Ticket prices vary for adults, students and children depending on whether you attend on a weekday or weekend. A full list of ticket prices can be found on the Philadelphia Flower Show's website .

Andrew Schulz "The Life Tour" at The Met

Comedian Andrew Schulz's The Life Tour will stop in Philly Friday and Saturday for performances at The Met.

Schulz has been in the comedy scene for years but is well known for his 2020 Netflix standup special "Schulz Saves America." He also doubles as a podcaster with two podcasts - "Flagrant" co-hosted by Akaash Singh and "The Brilliant Idiots" co-hosted by Charlamagne Tha God.

Tickets for Schulz's Saturday night show start at $97. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the show starts at 7 p.m. 

The Art of the Brick at The Franklin Institute

The humble Lego has been stealing the spotlight at the Franklin Institute since The Art of the Brick returned to the museum on Saturday, Feb. 17 .

The show features more than 100 creations, made entirely of Lego bricks by artist Nathan Sawaya.

New to the show this year are 13 sculptures of endangered animals. The Endangered Species Connection, a collaboration between Sawaya and award-winning photographer Dean West, aims to creatively raise awareness of some of the world's most endangered species, including the humpback whale, polar bear and lowland gorilla.

Visitors can also view galleries full of Lego versions of some of the world's most famous masterpieces, including Van Gogh's Starry Night and Da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

After exploring the exhibit's galleries, guests can explore a 9,000-square-foot brick play space and build their own creations using hundreds of thousands of colorful bricks.

The Art of the Brick exhibit runs until Sept. 2.

"Pay What You Wish Admission" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art 

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is a majestic landmark that's beloved across the globe. The only thing that's better than visiting, is visiting for less than a dollar. That's right, this Sunday visit the iconic museum for Pay What You Wish Admission. 

According to the museum's website , this deal happens on the first Sunday of every month from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and every Friday night from 5 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. Seriously, all you have to do is pay whatever amount you'd like. It's that easy.

Philadelphia area sports this weekend: 

Flyers vs. senators .

The Philadelphia Flyers also play this weekend. The Flyers will face off against the Ottawa Senators Saturday night at the Wells Fargo Center. The match begins at 7 p.m. Tickets start at $56.  

The Flyers are coming off a 2-5 loss to the Washington Capitals on Friday and are looking to get back in the win column. 

Drexel  vs. Northeastern

The Drexel Dragons face off against the Northeastern Huskies Saturday at the Daskalakis Athletic Center. Tip-off is at 4 p.m. Tickets start at $38 .

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Jessica MacAulay is an associate digital producer for CBSPhiladelphia.com. Jessica started out her career in broadcast journalism originally as an intern for CBS Philadelphia. She covers breaking news, local community and crime stories.

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March 01, 2024

Philadelphia Show to bring art and antiques to Fairmount in April

The fair will feature over 40 exhibitors specializing in jewelry, ceramics, silver, textiles and collectible design..

Kristin Hunt PhillyVoice

Vendors of fine art and antiques will exhibit on the Philadelphia Museum of Art's East Terrace from April 25 to April 28. Items will include the "Diana of the Tower" statue by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, courtesy of the Lillian Nassau antique shop, pictured above.

Arts lovers and anyone who considers "Antiques Roadshow" appointment viewing should mark their calendars: The Philadelphia Show returns to Fairmount next month.

The long-running art and design expo, now in its 62nd year, will set up shop on the East Terrace of the Philadelphia Museum of Art from Thursday, April 25, through Sunday, April 28. Over 40 exhibitors from around the nation, including a dozen from Pennsylvania, will display some of their finest paintings, sculptures, jewelry and furniture. All net proceeds will benefit programs in the art museum's learning and engagement division, including pay-what-you-wish family festivals and free admission for school groups from the School District of Philadelphia.

Visitors will see pieces like "Diana of the Tower" by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, an iteration of the sculptor's famous statue which stood atop Madison Square Garden at the turn of the 20th century. (The Philadelphia Museum of Art has the original.) The work of the late, renowned ceramicist Estelle Halper, whose swirling colors were inspired by abstract expressionism and Space Age exploration, will also be on display, along with paintings from long-time Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts instructor Jan Baltzell.

Blue vases by Estelle Halper

Estelle Halper vases from Pennsylvania's Moderne Gallery.

Jan Baltzell painting

A Jan Baltzell painting from the Schmidt-Dean Gallery of New Jersey.

The fair will also feature guided tours and a panel discussion between "Antiques Roadshow" senior producer Sam Farrell and several exhibitors who have appeared on the show. The festivities kick off with a ticketed preview party on Thursday evening. While children can attend the expo for free, single-day admission for adults starts at $20.

The Philadelphia Show

Thursday, April 25, to Sunday, April 28 Hours vary | $20 adult admission Philadelphia Museum of Art | East Terrace 2600 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy. Philadelphia, PA 19130

Follow Kristin & PhillyVoice on Twitter: @kristin_hunt | @thePhillyVoice Like us on Facebook: PhillyVoice Have a news tip ? Let us know.

Kristin Hunt PhillyVoice

Kristin Hunt PhillyVoice Staff

[email protected]

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Locations & Hours

Explore art, design, and architecture from all around the world.

We recognize Philadelphia as part of Lënapehòkink, the ancestral homelands of the Lenape peoples .

art museum to visit in philadelphia

Main Building

Explore 200 galleries of art at our iconic building, including new galleries and public spaces designed by visionary architect Frank Gehry.

Explore the Frank Gehry–designed spaces

Visitor Alerts

Health & safety measures.

Learn how we can ensure a safe and comfortable visit for all by reading our tips and policies .

Things to Know

  • The Philadelphia Museum of Art is one of the country’s oldest public art museums. View exhibitions
  • Our landmark main building houses one of the most comprehensive collections in the country, featuring some of the greatest gatherings of American, Asian, and European art anywhere.
  • We have the world’s largest Marcel Duchamp collection as well as superb Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, including important works by Monet, Renoir, Degas, Cézanne, and Van Gogh.
  • Enjoy free guided tours every day. Free with museum admission. View tours
  • Don’t miss our audio guide, which offers a deeper look at some of the museum’s greatest hits and beyond. We’ve teamed up with Smartify to offer a dynamic new experience right on your own mobile device. Pre-purchase the guide online at ticket checkout or at any of our admissions desks, $5 each ($4 for members; free for visitors who are blind or partially sighted). Currently offered in English, Mandarin, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, and Korean. Headphones are not provided, or required, but can be used for an optimal experience.
  • Our main building overlooks the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. View directions & parking

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Closed today

  • Monday , 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
  • Tuesday , Closed
  • Wednesday , Closed
  • Thursday , 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
  • Friday , 10:00 a.m.–8:45 p.m.
  • Saturday , 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
  • Sunday , 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.

Holiday Hours

Open until 3:00 p.m. Christmas Eve

Closed July 4, Thanksgiving & Christmas

Open Dec 26 & 27, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.

art museum to visit in philadelphia

Anne d’Harnoncourt Sculpture Garden

Our vast galleries extend to the outdoors. Explore our one-acre Sculpture Garden and experience large-scale contemporary works by artists like Claes Oldenburg and Toshiko Takaezu.

  • Designed by OLIN landscape architects and Atkin Olshin Schade Architects, the Sculpture Garden features an upper and a lower terrace, two graveled galleries, and a paved plaza.
  • This space is dedicated to our late director Anne d’Harnoncourt, whose passion for art made a lasting impact on the museum and the city of Philadelphia.
  • The larger-than-life Giant Three-Way Plug (Cube Tap) by Claes Oldenburg
  • A bronze bell by Toshiko Takaezu
  • Curve I of 1973 by Ellsworth Kelly
  • A sculpture of a whale’s tail by Gordon Gund

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Outside main building, above parking garage

Open sunrise to sunset

art museum to visit in philadelphia

Rodin Museum

Head down the Parkway to the Rodin Museum’s elegant Beaux-Arts–style building and tranquil garden. There you’ll experience one of the greatest collections of works by Auguste Rodin, the father of modern sculpture. Visit the Rodin Museum website to learn more about its stunning collection.

The Rodin Museum is included with your Philadelphia Museum of Art general admission ticket.

If you are visiting the Rodin Museum only, admission is Pay What You Wish. Pay whatever amount you’d like but here are some suggestions:

  • On view are nearly 150 bronze, marble, and plaster sculptures representing every phase of Rodin’s career.
  • The Dorrance H. Hamilton Garden in front is free to the public all year long.
  • Free Wi-Fi is available within the building and in the garden.
  • Park in the garage at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which is 20-minute walk from the Rodin Museum. You can validate your parking ticket here.
  • Free wheelchairs and assistive listening devices are available. An accessible restroom also available.
  • Short on time? You can tour most of the Rodin Museum in less than 30 minutes.

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  • Monday , 10:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m.
  • Thursday , Closed
  • Friday , 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.

art museum to visit in philadelphia

Perelman Building

This landmark Art Deco building was called “the Gateway to Fairmount Park” when it opened in 1927 as the headquarters for the Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company. Located at the intersection of Pennsylvania and Fairmount Avenues, it is a short walk from the main building.

Closure Alert

The Perelman Building is currently closed until further notice.

[object Object]

Closed until further notice

art museum to visit in philadelphia

Historic House Cedar Grove

Across the Schuylkill River, this eighteenth-century stone house in West Fairmount Park offers a glimpse into Philadelphia’s history.

Cedar Grove is currently closed until further notice.

  • Cedar Grove once stood in Philadelphia’s Frankford neighborhood. Built for Elizabeth Coates Paschall in 1746, it was the summer home for five generations of the Coates, Paschall, and Morris families of Philadelphia.
  • The house was presented as a gift to the city of Philadelphia in 1926. It moved to its current location in West Fairmount Park and opened to the public in 1927.
  • Inside the house, you will see fine examples of early Pennsylvania furniture, as well as a charming kitchen with an open hearth and bake oven.

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Historic House Mount Pleasant

Mount Pleasant in East Fairmount Park is one the grandest homes ever built along the Schuylkill River, once called “the most elegant seat in Pennsylvania” by statesman John Adams.

Mount Pleasant is currently closed until further notice.

  • Mount Pleasant is considered one of the greatest American houses of its type, still standing on its original site in what is now Fairmount Park.
  • Often called “the largest object in the museum’s collection,” Mount Pleasant was the home of Scottish ship captain John Macpherson and his wife Margaret between 1762 and 1765.
  • Mount Pleasant architect Thomas Nevell was an apprentice of Edmund Woolley, the builder of Independence Hall. The rooms feature craftmanship from carver Martin Jugiez, one of Philadelphia’s leading artisans.
  • The Mount Pleasant estate originally included over 100 acres of land that the owners hoped to make productive through hay production, fruit and vegetable cultivation, and animal husbandry. Such a plantation involved a diversity of labor, including the enslavement of four people of African descent.

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11 things not to miss at the 2024 Philadelphia Flower Show

Looking to shake off the cobwebs and embrace those spring vibes?

Nothing helps put winter firmly behind us in the Philadelphia region faster than a tour through the Philadelphia Flower Show.

This perennial favorite will celebrate its 195th event indoors at the Pennsylvania Convention Center from Saturday, March 2, to Sunday, March 10. Tickets are on sale now.

Whether you are seeking garden inspiration, an infusion of creative energy for an art project, a fun way to get those steps in or a romantic weekend backdrop, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's annual event is the place.

If you have never attended the show before, a few things to keep in mind: Leave yourself plenty of time to get your bearings, deal with busy periods and lines, and to see everything you hope to see. Wear comfortable shoes and layers in case you get warm in the Philadelphia Convention Center attractions. Think ahead on whether you want to nosh there, or eat before you go to save some green stuff. Stay hydrated and keep track of any kiddos you bring along. And pace yourself, taking breaks when you need to, as it's a large-scale event.

What is the Philadelphia Flower Show? 

With bragging rights as the nation's largest and longest-running horticultural event and fundraiser, the Philadelphia Flower Show flourishes with displays from the world's top floral, garden and landscape designers, plus more botanical bliss for a week of green-thumbed goodness.  

Philadelphia Flower Show 2024 theme

This year's theme is "United By Flowers" and it "celebrates the unique and colorful community born out of our shared love and appreciation of gardening and the connections and impact they create on our everyday lives," according to organizers.  

The Flower Show takes place at the Pennsylvania Convention Center (1101 Arch St., Philadelphia) from Saturday, March 2 to Sunday, March 10. Tickets are $25-$50 per day. Visit phsonline.org/the-flower-show . 

Philadelphia Flower Shower hours

Here are the hours for this year's event:

  • March 2 to 9: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
  • March 10: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Top 11 things not to miss at the Philadelphia Flower Show

To get you in a flower state of mind, and make the most of your daytrip, PHS shares this list of the Top 11 Things Not to Miss at the 2024 Philadelphia Flower Show, “United by Flowers.''

The PHS Entrance Garden

"The PHS Entrance Garden explores the theme of “Edges and Reflections.” Your Flower Show visit begins with this aquatic floral spectacle, boasting the Flower Show's largest body of water ever created and vibrant floral sculptures. Colossal aerial blooms dance above, reflecting in the glass-like surface. This modern oasis, a kaleidoscope of colors and bold angles, invites contemplation amidst its suspended floral clouds,'' according to Flower Show organizers.

Celebrate the region

"Experience the neighborhoods interpreted as gardens! Local schools highlight the unique spirit of the region through gardens dedicated to neighborhoods like Roxborough, South Philly’s Pennsport and the Italian Market, Spring Garden, Doylestown's small-town charm, and more.''

Visit Burpee’s Pop-Up Shop

"Talk to the seed and plant experts! Burpee’s team of horticulture pros will be in person with answers to your gardening questions every day. While you’re there, get a jump on the growing season and shop from trusted Burpee varieties classic and new, including brilliant ‘United By Zinnias,’ a 2024 Flower Show exclusive. Plus, take home your free copy of the information-packed Burpee catalog featuring information on vegetable, flower, and fruit varieties, plus tips on how to plant and sow, container and pollinator gardening tips, and more''

Penn Museum

"Ancient Food & Flavor – Ever wonder when humans first started making wine? Or growing potatoes? Discover what plants were important to communities who lived thousands of years ago at Penn Museum’s preview display of their newest exhibition, 'Ancient Food & Flavor!' Penn Museum educators will be available onsite to share wondrous stories about some of the world’s oldest leftovers!''

Turn to PHS for the best in garden knowledge — Know to Grow

"Develop your green thumb at Know to Grow!'' invite the PHS folks. "New this year, the Flower Show will host a free gardening speaker series on various topics up to four times a day. Presentation topics range from garden design, vegetable gardening, native plants, container gardening, shade gardening, rock gardening, houseplants, and information on PHS programs. Whether you are 'plant-curious' or a professional, learn something new and walk away with practical takeaways from acclaimed experts!''

Unleash your inner plant nerd in the PHS Hamilton Horticourt

"Take in the beauty of incredible and rare plants, all competing in the nation’s largest plant competition for a blue ribbon! Read the judges' comments, see the winners, and pick your favorite out of this rotating lineup of unique plants!''

Take in beautiful botanical-inspired artwork and jewelry

"Prepare to be wowed by stunning, intricate artwork and jewelry made of botanical materials! See what the judges had to say about these incredible works of art and be inspired by what these talented artists create!''

Get your most pressing plant questions answered at The Plant People Place!

"Got a houseplant that isn’t quite thriving?'' PHS folks ask "Want to learn how to plant your bulbs? The Plant People Place connects you with gardening experts to answer all your gardening questions, suggest a plant, or chat about all things gardening and horticulture! Stop by and develop your green thumb!''

Fun for the Family at Kids Cocoon and Family Frolic

"Bring the whole family and make some memories! Kids Cocoon is a dedicated space for kids to play, learn, and have fun! The Show’s youngest guests can plant a seedling, read a story, and enjoy activities from local partners, with hourly programming every day. Purchase a special Flower Show coloring book designed by local artists, so kids can enjoy page after page of colorful flowers long after their visit to the Show!'

"On Sunday, March 3, enjoy Family Frolic, a special day at the Flower Show dedicated to those with little ones. With your Flower Show ticket, enjoy lots of free activities and programming, face painting, giveaways, mascot visits, and more.''

Experience the Philadelphia Flower Show alongside your Doggie BFF at Fido Friday!

On Friday, March 8, from 5 to 8 p.m., "guests and their doggie pals can experience “United by Flowers” together, featuring fur-friendly activations and both dogs and humans sporting their floral best!''

Shop local at Artisan Row and the Makers Market

'Visit Artisan Row, the Flower Show’s experiential hub, where you can choose from 7 unique artists and create your own elevated floral or gardening-inspired memento. Choose from fresh floral crowns, candles, floral handbags, floral bouquets, terrarium making, dried flower bud vases, and botanical jewelry,'' organizers recommend.

"Nearby, visit the Makers Market, featuring a variety of local artisans and their handmade wares. In 2024, the Makers Market will nearly double in size and include handcrafted jewelry, floral relief prints, artwork, gorgeous smelling essential oils and self-care essentials, and giftable items.''

To purchase tickets to the Flower Show, please visit tickets.phsonline.org .

To stay up to date with the latest information on the 2024 Flower Show, visit phsonline.org/the-flower-show .

For questions, email [email protected] .

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