Great art speaks to everyone in different ways, and the South’s impressive assortment of museums prove that art is for everyone. From the world-famous Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, to quieter collections like the one at the Walter Anderson Museum in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, our region is blessed with some of best art museums in the country and even the world. Here are 17 that are worth planning a trip around.
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Happy 15th anniversary to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, founded by philanthropist and Walmart heir Alice Walton and resplendent with hundreds of influential works—from Norman Rockwell’s Rosie the Riveter to a stained glass window from Tiffany Studios. With its recent 114,000-square-foot expansion, you’ll wander past newer pieces (such as sculptor Nari Ward’s We the People, an installation composed of shoelaces) as well as classics by Georgia O’Keeffe and Asher B. Durand. Current exhibitions include Keith Haring’s bold designs reimagined in 3D as well as the rural-focused “Grandma Moses: A Good Day’s Work” by Anna Mary Robertson, also known as Grandma Moses, who had her first solo show at age 80. An “art everywhere” philosophy means the hallways, elevators, and even restrooms are filled with more to see.
crystalbridges.org; 600 Museum Way Bentonville, AR 72712; 479-418-5700
Birmingham Museum of Art
The Birmingham Museum of Art, which has been around for 75 years, boasts the largest Wedgwood assortment outside England, masterworks (predominantly Italian Renaissance) from the Kress Collection, and the Lamprecht Collection of German cast-iron objects. They also have one of the broadest selections of Asian pieces in the Southeast, featuring Vietnamese ceramics and Japanese woodblock prints, plus works from China, Korea, and India. Their showstopping Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California, an 1865 painting by Albert Bierstadt, was honored as one of 40 pieces included in the Picturing America program by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Library Association. Set to open in late September, the “Roll Call: Two Hundred Years of Black American Art” exhibit draws from the museum’s extensive permanent collection.
artsbma.org; 2000 Rev. Abraham Woods, Jr. Blvd, Birmingham, AL 35203; 205-254-2565
Booth Western Art Museum
Cartersville, Georgia
Inside a building “designed to resemble a modern pueblo,” the Booth Western Art Museum brings the world of mesas, cattle, and renowned American frontiersman Kit Carson to a small town that’s just an hour’s drive north of Atlanta. At 120,000 square feet, this place thinks big. Maynard Dixon’s 1935 Red Butte With Mountain Men is about 8 by 18 feet, and Custer’s Last Rally by John Mulvany (created a few years after the general’s 1876 demise at the Little Bighorn) is 10.5 by 20 feet. Emotions continue in Loren Entz’s A Helping Hand, with its lone motherless calf caught in a snowstorm. And there are surprises—the abstract multimedia Home on the Range: Storytellers and Singing Cowboys is by Bernie Taupin, who is better known as Elton John’s songwriting partner…