Explore Great Museums
In our travels, the GREAT MUSEUMS team has profiled many museums - both on and off the beaten path. Over a decade ago, we began compiling a list of the museums of the United States. Visit our Find a Museum page to discover a great museum in your back yard. There are over… more >
Behind the Scenes with Museum Professionals The thousands of people who work in museums are as diverse as museums themselves. Join us as we explore the museum world and celebrate the people who bring our favorite cultural institutions to life. GREAT MUSEUMS regularly… more >
Margaret and Charles Burroughs started a black history Museum in their Chicago living room with items collected from their travels to Africa. This museum became the DuSable Museum of African American History, the oldest museum of its type in the country. From GREAT MUSEUMS:… more >
From the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon by Pablo Picasso, 1907 What do the superstars of modern art - van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, Pollock, Warhol - have in common with the Vincent Black Shadow motorcycle and an Apple iPod? All share the… more >
Congo Square celebrates African arts and culture. Each week, musicians, dancers and drummers gather in Congo Square, just inside the gates of Louis Armstrong Park to perform in the authentic West African manner. New Orleans: A Living Museum of Music. more >
On a beautiful day in late September 2012, New York City officials and public and private donors joined with the Friends of the High Line to mark the groundbreaking of the last and final section of the park. Encompassing a vast area that stretches from the Hudson River to… more >
Cover photo of Starry Night, by Vincent van Gogh (1889), courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Above photo of The Great Hall courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Brooks Walker. GREAT MUSEUMS is an award-winning television series celebrating the museum world—in the… more >
What’s a motorcycle doing in an art museum, sharing the stage with paintings by Picasso and Matisse? Glenn Lowry, Director of MoMA, and Terence Riley, Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, explain. From GREAT MUSEUMS: In Our Time: The Museum of Modern Art (2006).… more >
From architect Renzo Piano’s workshop, high on a hilltop north of Genoa, Italy, come some of the world’s most innovative museum designs. Here Piano speaks about his design for the High Museum, the centerpiece of a “village for the arts” on Peachtree St. in Atlanta. From… more >
Dr. Steve Monfort, Head of Conservation and Science at the National Zoo, calls Giant Pandas the rock stars of animal world. There is no better ambassador for endangered species in the wild than the charismatic Giant Panda, whose own numbers are down to a mere 1600. In this… more >
Margaret Burroughs, a poet, visual artist, educator and arts organizer, grew up in Chicago and made a lasting contribution to that city’s arts and humanities community. Her reach, however, has extended far beyond Chicago’s borders. One of the founding members of the… more >
Wilhelmina Holladay, “Billie,” is the co-founder of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Billie and her husband Wallace began collecting art in the 1960s, at a time when scholars and art historians were beginning to take note of the underrepresentation of women and… more >
William S. Morris III founded the Morris Museum of Art in 1992, in memory of his parents. Morris, who is the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Morris Communications, also publishes The Augusta Chronicle, one of the country’s oldest continually published… more >
Carlos Tortolero, President and Founder of the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, came to Chicago from Mexico as a small child. For many years he worked as a history teacher, counselor and administrator in the Chicago Public School System. In 1982, he and several… more >
A dance performance - AND a dance lesson - get the ladies in Congo Square moving to an African ancestral beat. From GREAT MUSEUMS: New Orleans: A Living Museum of Music. more >
