Sure, museums are great for field trips, but there are probably some in your very own state you’re not even aware of! And what’s better on a vacation to a new city than a leisurely stroll appreciating art, science, or culture? Read on to learn our picks for the best museum in every state of the US.
Georgia
The World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta would like to remind you that Coke is from Atlanta. Did you know that? Well, if you’ve ever been to any part of the Southeast, someone will have told you already. You can learn more about this history by visiting the museum’s many exhibits, including a tasting room.
Idaho
The Museum of Clean in Idaho might have an odd name, but it’s exactly what the name suggests. Visitors can tour the history of cleaning products, including exhibits of some of the earliest versions of the washing machine or vacuum cleaner.
Texas
Texans love nothing more than to tell you all about the history of Texas. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Bullock Texas State Museum in Austin, which tracks that history from the arrival of Europeans to the modern-day version of the state. The museum even has an IMAX theater with educational videos about the state’s history.
Nebraska
The Durham Museum is right inside Union Station in Omaha, Nebraska. It’s an interesting museum that showcases the history of the entire state through everything from 1940s-style storefronts to painstakingly restored classic train cars. The biggest draw is the station’s art-deco architecture.
Alaska
The Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center is full of interesting exhibits. It visually explains the history of Alaska, including a large selection of indigenous art that gives visitors a good idea of what the state was like before European populations arrived.
Kentucky
It’s pretty easy to see why the American Saddlebred Museum is in Lexington, Kentucky. The home of the Kentucky Derby has only one native breed, the Saddlebred! It stands to reason that the state famous for horse racing would want to show off its collection of Saddlebred memorabilia and exhibits.
South Dakota
South Dakota’s The Mammoth Site and Museum has an interesting history. An equipment operator clearing an area to build houses in 1974 happened upon a mammoth tusk, and paleontologists descended on the area to excavate mammoth bones. Visitors can see excavations in action, as paleontologists are still recovering bones from the site.
Mississippi
Architect Frank Gehry designed the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi to resemble the works of George E. Ohr, the “Mad Potter”. Ohr’s surreal sculptures complement the many paintings of Georgia O’Keefe that make up the rest of the permanent collection.
Vermont
The Lincoln Family Home, Hildene, is a museum in Manchester, Vermont that was home to Robert Lincoln. Robert was the only child of Abraham and Mary Todd to grow to adulthood, and his manor home serves as an interesting look back in time into the way the Lincoln family lived.
Indiana
The Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum in Indiana is a car lover’s dream come true. The museum’s 120 automobile exhibits span the decades, starting with some of the earliest motorized vehicles and tracking all the way up to more modern designs.
West Virginia
The Huntington Museum of Art in West Virginia is a sprawling campus that houses over 16,000 art objects. It’s also got a tropical plant conservatory and a coral reef aquarium, both of which make the museum more than just a fun place for art enthusiasts to visit!
Connecticut
Connecticut’s Mystic Seaport Museum isn’t claiming to be magical. It’s located in a town called Mystic, where a history of whaling leaves a complicated legacy. Mystic was the site where the last wooden whaling vessel was built, and the museum seeks to capture this culture by serving as an 1800s-era fishing village frozen in time.
Wyoming
Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming is actually five museums, but we’ll count it here as one for the sake of our list. If you want to know about the Old West, this is where you need to go. You can find artifacts from legends of the West to artwork from the time period that captures what it was like!
North Dakota
If you didn’t expect North Dakota’s coolest museum to be the Cowboy Hall of Fame, then you probably don’t know a lot about North Dakota. This installation educates guests on the overlapping cultures between Native American tribes, ranching, and rodeos.
New Hampshire
The Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire is a quaint living history museum ideal for family trips. It encompasses thirty seven buildings that serve as snapshots of how the town looked in the late 17th century through to the middle of the 20th century.
New Jersey
Trenton, New Jersey is home to the state’s most interesting museum: the aptly named Old Barracks Museum. The restored structure served as a real military outpost in the Revolutionary War after its construction in 1758. The modern exhibits teach guests about life in Colonial-era America.
South Carolina
Charleston, South Carolina boasts so many great museums that it has a stretch known as “Museum Mile.” The finest of these, of course, is the Charleston Museum. It sports artifacts from the Colonial era, exhibitions about the Revolutionary War, and somber displays that educate guests about the Civil War.
Rhode Island
The Rhode Island School of Design is one of the best fine art schools in the United States. Its accompanying museum features pieces of ancient artwork from Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and more recent art from David Hammons, John McCracken, and Marsden Hartley.
Minnesota
The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota is renowned for its stunning architecture. The exterior sculpture garden is one of the foremost collections of modern art in the world. Fans of contemporary artwork need to visit this haven of the avant-garde.
Iowa
Iowa’s Quad Cities are home to the Figge Art Museum, an unassuming but impressive museum full of stunning pieces of art. Of particular note is the Figge’s unique Haitian Collection, including art from the 1940s through to the present day.
Maine
Is anyone surprised that there’s a Maritime Museum in Bath, Maine? If you want to learn about lobster, fishing, or how wooden ships are manufactured, you’ve got to check out these exhibits. Guests can even visit a full-scale replica of the Two Lights Lighthouse.
Montana
The Museum of the Rockies in Montana is a Smithsonian affiliate that is a top destination for dinosaur fans. Its central attraction is a truly breathtaking complete T. Rex skeleton, which locals call “Big Mike”. Seeing the towering lizard in the flesh will give you a new appreciation for the power of the dinosaurs.
Kansas
It’s strange on the plains! Kansas’s Museum of World Treasures in Wichita plays host to an unusual collection of exhibits. It includes everything from the fossilized remains of dinosaurs to giant geodes created over millions of years in the earth’s crust.
Utah
The Natural History Museum in Utah is crammed full of exhibits dedicated to the state’s landscape and paleontology efforts. From the prehistoric Native Americans who inhabit Utah to gems and minerals mined from the local geography, this is one museum that finds beauty in the earth.
Oklahoma
The Chickasaw Cultural Center in Sulphur, Oklahoma is a modern, stunning museum that incorporates important Chickasaw cultural symbols into a breathtaking architectural marvel. If you’re even passingly interested in the culture of the tribe, you need to visit this amazing museum.
Wisconsin
Anyone who’s studied architecture has heard the name Frank Lloyd Wright. His home, Taliesin in Spring Grove, Wisconsin, became a museum after his passing. Much of the original structure was burned down by a house worker, but after being restored became a center for architectural study.
Hawaii
Fans of the stars owe it to themselves to visit ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center at some point in their lives. This museum sports some breathtaking exhibits, including displays charting the history of Polynesian astronomical navigation to Hawaii’s current place in the world of space observation.
Massachusetts
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston is one of the prettiest museums in the world. It was once the home of Isabella Stewart Gardner herself, an avid art collector and fan of Venetian architecture. Her personal collection and home became a museum after her passing.
Arizona
You’ve got to love a museum that explains it all with its name. The Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona has exhibits of nearly 7,000 instruments and musical objects from across human history. The displays start with the early stone age and mark developments through history, up to iconic instruments played by modern performers.
Colorado
The Denver Art Museum is Colorado’s largest, and it’s breathtaking to see from the outside. That’s before you even see the awe-inspiring traveling collections that the museum hosts. Anyone who is serious about art needs to visit this wonderful collection at some point.
Virginia
The Jamestown Settlement is a living history museum that recreates the appearance of the first permanent English colony in the Americas. Staff in period-accurate costumes educate visitors about life in the colony while touring through restored buildings, 17th century ships, and more.
Delaware
The Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library is more than just a mouthful to say. It was also once the home of renowned art collector Henry Francis du Pont, which became a museum after his passing. The 175 rooms of the sprawling former home house both permanent and touring art collections.
Arkansas
The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art was designed to inspire awe. It’s free to the public, surrounded by a beautiful natural landscape, and was beautifully designed by architect Moshe Safdie. The permanent collection includes works from Andy Warhol and Georgia O’Keefe.
Illinois
The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is both the largest science museum in the country and one of the best places for knowledge-seekers to visit. The only real drawback to this enormous museum is that you won’t have time to see everything in a single visit. The main attraction is a German submarine from the Second World War, which guests can even tour.
Tennessee
Memphis was at the center of many headlines during the Civil Rights Movement, so it only stands to reason that the National Civil Rights Museum would be located there. Grimly, the museum is located in the Lorraine Motel, where legendary Civil Rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.
North Carolina
There are few museums with names as straightforward as Raleigh’s North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Despite its somewhat clinical name, this seven-story attraction takes up two city blocks and has exhibits ranging from dinosaur fossils to real-life meteorites and beyond.
Michigan
The Detroit Institute of Arts in Michigan is one of the best art museums in the United States. While Detroit might have a reputation for industry, it’s an artsy town when it counts. There are over 100 galleries in this sprawling museum, including works from ancient times and contemporary pieces.
Oregon
The Portland Art Museum in Oregon is the nexus of the city’s robust art scene. The permanent exhibits feature everything from Native American artwork to modern works from the past decade. The traveling exhibits range widely and are known for being some of the coolest art displays in the world.
Florida
The Dali Museum in St. Petersburg contains many of famed surrealist Salvador Dali’s iconic pieces. Visitors have remarked that visiting the Florida museum is much easier than traveling overseas to Spain to get a glimpse of the beloved artist’s perception-bending work.
Washington
The Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle might not be what you typically think of when you imagine a museum. It’s got exhibits on everything from horror movies to the band Nirvana. If you’re even a little interested in something from pop culture, you’ll find a few exhibits you’ll enjoy!
Louisiana
The National WWII Museum in New Orleans is a must-visit spot for any history buff, no matter how much they know about the biggest conflict in human history. It contains a dizzying number of artifacts from the Second World War, from weapons to letters and even including an intact B-17 Bomber.
Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio is home to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Need we say more? Yes? Okay, seismologists say that to this day they’re still detecting vibrations in the Earth’s crust from the last time that Freddie Mercury and Queen rocked out (not really but just go with it).
Missouri
Downtown St. Louis is home to the coolest and strangest museum in Missouri. The City Museum is as much an interactive playground as it is an art exhibit. It’s stored in an old warehouse and comprised of everything from planes and firetrucks to organ pipes and steel beams.
Pennsylvania
The main reason to visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art is to jog up the steps while “Eye of the Tiger” plays at an absurd volume in your headphones. Okay, for everyone who didn’t appreciate the Rocky reference, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is a wonderful series of exhibits.
Alabama
The US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama is where kids are actually going when they say they’re attending space camp. It’s a phenomenal museum that offers a unique glimpse into the world of aerospace navigation, NASA, and the rockets that let astronauts travel to space.
Maryland
The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland is not a typical art museum. Here, you won’t find the works of Van Gogh or Monet. Instead, it showcases only self-taught artists, and each exhibit includes context about the creator’s life and history with art.
New York
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan is one of the foremost collections of human artistic achievement in the world. From ancient Egyptian art to paintings from European masters, the Met is full of first-rate pieces that enthusiasts and laypeople alike will adore.
California
California has dozens of excellent museums, but for the sake of brevity we’ll just highlight the J. Paul Getty Museum in LA. The museum hosts pieces by Van Gogh, Monet, and other famous painters. It’s also surrounded by beautiful fountains, gardens, and outdoor sculptures.
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Nevada
Organized crime might not seem like the kind of thing that would get its own museum, but the Mob Museum in Las Vegas is just that. The exhibits will teach you about some of the most notorious gangsters from America’s history, their role in shaping the popular conception of organized crime, and how Prohibition affected the country.
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New Mexico
Artists in Sante Fe, New Mexico worked together to create Meow Wolf, a truly trippy art installation that immerses guests in otherworldly landscapes through multimedia experiences. It’s all connected by a house in the middle of the installation that allows you to enter other “dimensions” through unusual doors—like walking through the fridge.
