With so many museums and Art Galleries around the world begging to be on your travel bucket list, it can be overwhelming to try and narrow it down to the ones you might actually get around to visiting.
To help you in your quest for cultural enlightenment, here are 7 of the top art galleries across the world that you must commit to visiting.
1. The Museum of Modern Art – New York, NY, USA
Known colloquially as MoMA, this gallery has a wide variety of modern and contemporary art, such as Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night (1889) to Frida Kahlo’s Self Portrait with Cropped Hair (1940).
2. The Louvre – Paris, France
The Louvre is the world’s most visited museum, with 9.6 million visitors walking through the gallery halls every year. It is also physically the largest, spanning 60,600 square metres (or 652,300 square feet), and containing more than 380,00 objects and 35,000 works of art.
This is because The Louvre unarguably holds some of history’s most iconic works of art, including Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (c.1503-1506), Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’ Grande Odalisque (1814), and Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830)
3. Saatchi Gallery – London, UK
The Saatchi Gallery draws upon the collection of Charles Saatchi, presenting contemporary art exhibitions and showcasing emerging artists since 1985. This gallery has a great influence over the art culture of the UK, launching the careers of many talented young creatives.
Over the years, Charles Saatchi himself has notably backed Damien Hirst, purchasing his first major installation, and Tracey Emin, of Turner Prize fame. However, the star of the show at the Saatchi Gallery in London has to be the Andy Warhol collection.
Famous pieces on show include Triple Elvis, Marilyn x11, Atomic Bomb, 16 Jackies, Campbell’s Soup Can, Mao, and many other captivating artworks.
4. Towada Art Center – Towada-shi, Aomori, Japan
Opened in 2008, this small gallery only has a permanent collection of 38 works. However, these pieces are all from prominent artists, such as Yoko Ono, Yoshitomo Nanar, Do Ho Suh, and Jeong Hwa Choi.
5. The Uffizi Gallery – Florence, Italy
The Uffizi Gallery is an absolute must-visit, purely to take in the beauty of one of the world’s most famous Renaissance paintings, The Birth of Venus (1482-1485) by Sandro Botticelli. Other iconic masterpieces include the works of Titian, Caravaggio, and da Vinci.
6. The Reina SofÃa – Madrid, Spain
The star of The Reina SofÃa has to be Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937), closely contended by Salvador Dali’s Face of the Great Masturbator (1929).
7. State Hermitage Museum – St. Petersburg, Russia
After The Louvre, the second-largest art museum in the world is the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. This gallery spans 233,345 square metres, with 100,00 square metres of exhibition space and over 1 million works of art and 3 million items on display – the world’s largest collection of paintings.
The State Hermitage Museum was said to be founded in 1764 when Catherine the Great acquired an impressive collection of works from a Berlin merchant. Its current collection includes works by Titian. Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Picasso, and much more.