Featured, Guide of the Week, Travel Guides
Culture Vulture: The Best of Arts Travel Worldwide
For those who love to travel and appreciate the endless variety of art found worldwide—and throughout history—the globe is one giant museum. Feast your eyes on our top destination picks for art aficionados.
New York
The top arts city in the U.S. is, arguably, New York. The Big Apple is home to over 500 museums, art galleries and cultural institutions, including some of the top collections in the world. The “big three” art museums are the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art. The Met boasts every category of art in every known medium, from every part of the world and over a vast expanse of time; you can’t get more comprehensive than that. The Guggenheim is as visually stunning as a building, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, as is its exciting exhibits of 19th and 20th century artists.
The MOMA houses more than 100,000 works of contemporary art and some 150,000 films and books, including groundbreaking pieces by Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock. Don’t miss Target Free Friday Nights, offering free MOMA admission every Friday from 4:00-8:00 PM. In addition to these major museums, New York is full of smaller art museums, art galleries, and working artists’ studios around every corner. Check out Chelsea for the biggest concentration of galleries and the DUMBO area of Brooklyn for up-and-coming artists.
Paris
When art lovers think of the City of Lights, Musée du Louvre instantly to mind. Open since 1793, the Louvre’s collection is the most visited in the world, and includes pieces from the Middle Ages through the mid-19th century. Yet, it should only be the first stop of the city’s world-class museums. The unique Beaux-Arts style Musée d’Orsay, located in an old railroad station, is home to a mostly Impressionist collection of paintings and sculptures from 1848 to 1914, bridging the period gap between the Louvre and the modern art collection at the Centre Pompidou. Many visitors come to the Pompidou just to ride its glass-enclosed elevators and take in breathtaking city views. Housed within its post-modern walls is a superb collection of cubism, surrealism, Dadaism, abstracts and pop art.
Paris is also full of hidden gems and a growing contemporary art scene. Several newer venues have rejuvenated the museum trek, such as the Institut du Monde Arabe and the ultra-modern Palais de Tokyo. Perhaps most notably, the city’s latest art trend mixes fresh, new work with live music, dance and performance art. Street artists, converted warehouse studios, and performance art venues have breathed fresh life into the culture establishment. “Le squat artistique” has become so mainstream in Paris, in fact, that many venues are now tourist attractions, accessible through art tour companies such as Art Process.
Beijing
The Chinese capital has more than 3,000 years of recorded history and a glorious cultural heritage, yet has given birth to an artistic youth movement in recent years. Today’s Beijing is a place where ancient historical sights stand side-by-side with a thriving avant-garde culture. There is almost an identity collision between old and new here, a messy schizophrenia that shows up in its exciting art world.
The 798 Art District is a huge haven for the creative class, housed in once decaying state-owned factories and warehouses from the 1950s. This industrial wasteland has been reborn into what just might be the most eclectic and vibrant artistic venue anywhere in the world. Expanding outward from Originality Square, 798 is home to hundreds of art galleries, studios, boutiques selling everything from high fashion to Mao kitsch, bookstores, restaurants and bars, all housed in the Bauhaus style buildings. Simply walking around can lead to fascinating discoveries.
LowFares.com is giving away one free flight to two lucky winners in our Summer Travel Survey Contest. To enter, take the LowFares.com Summer Travel Survey. Your participation automatically enters you into a drawing to win a $250.00 gift card for your travel plans!
___________________________________________
Hi, my name is Gerry, me and my husband are retired and live in Bellingham Washington, we have never been to Paris, it would be fantastic to go there for my 70th, birthday. Best wishes, Gerry Kollen.