Best Museums in the United States

The best museums in the United States are well known to many of us, but few are fortunate enough to have visited all of the most famous ones. For the single museophile or for a field trip for a family, club or classroom, in one of these museums you can have access to discoveries that will imprint the memory for years to come, as museums are repositories of the wonders of the world around us.

• Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY: This museum is considered to be one of the premier art museums in the world and has pieces not found or rarely found anywhere else in the world. These rare finds are Egyptian mummies, amulets, sculpture and works of Egyptian decorative arts. There are exhibits of Classical and Ancient Near East art, the Arts of Africa, the Arts of the Pacific Islands and Islamic Arts. Assyrian reliefs are found here as well as decorative arts through the centuries. Contemporary artworks have their themed exhibits and a fine collection of centuries of European art is there to be perused. A sculpture of Rodin and sculptures from the Steinberg Family Collection are found in the surrounding gardens.


• Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, WY: This is considered to be America’s finest museum of the West and is located not far from Yellowstone.  Here are exhibits showing the explorations and settling of the West complete with many of the famous Western American artworks. Also found here is a cultural history of all the American Indian tribes of the West and their artworks. For young and old alike, the flora and fauna of the West are exhibited in the Natural History museum.


• Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia: Whether in person, by electronic field trips or by weekly podcasts, this is a museum not to be missed. It was founded by John D. Rockefeller and is the world's largest museum of living history. It is comprised of 301 acres of restored and refurbished buildings to explore that are historically furnished. Guides in costume do storytelling of how the peoples of the various countries of the world came to colonize the New World. You will feel that you have stepped back in time to when the nation was first founded.


• Smithsonian Museum and Research Complex, Washington, DC: Here is where you will find the Zoological Park and 19 museums that comprise the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian is the world’s largest museum and for decades has been among the most popular museums in the world. Every area of the sciences, arts, technologies, sculptures, histories and cultures are here as well as the ever popular Air and Space Museum, American Indian Museum, the Natural History Museum, among others, and surrounded by the Smithsonian Gardens. 


• The Academy of Natural Science, Philadelphia, PA: This museum is considered a leader in biodiversity and environmental research and is the oldest natural history museum in the United States. Here are more than a dozen reconstructed dinosaurs, impressive wildlife dioramas of animal habitats from around the globe, botanical exhibits, the works of John J. Audubon, Egyptian mummies and the children’s museum of live animals.