The travel review site TripAdvisor measured both the quantity and quality of reviews and ratings on the museums that are regularly on travelers’ lists, on its site over the past 12 months to reveal the top museums in the USA of its Travelers’ Choice Awards.
Top 10 Museums in the U.S.
Photo: Rain0975 / Flickr
Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Titusville, Florida
Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex lets you explore space history, get up close to the Space Shuttle Atlantis® Exhibit, visit Heroes & Legends, Explore Mars, and NASA, space history and future. You can join the Scenes special tours. Admission and a viewing ticket is required.
Photo: Wilson Loo Kok Wee / Flickr
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City
The Museum of Modern Art plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of the largest and most influential museums of modern art in the world.
The MoMA Library includes approximately 300,000 books and exhibition catalogs, over 1,000 periodical titles, and over 40,000 files of ephemera about individual artists and groups.
Photo: Ingfbruno / Wikipedia
American Museum of Natural History in New York City, New York
The American Museum of Natural History is the largest natural history museum in the world. The museum collections contain over 33 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time, and occupies more than 2 million square feet.
Photo: Matt Kieffer / Flickr
The Getty Center in Los Angeles, California
Over 2 million people each year visit the Getty Center and the Getty Villa art, architecture, and gardens at the two locations in Los Angeles. The Center branch of the Museum features pre-20th-century European paintings, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, and decorative arts; and photographs from the 1830s through the present day.
Photo: Jonathan Cutrer / Flickr
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
The National Air and Space Museum is a center for research into the history and science of aviation and spaceflight, planetary science and geophysics.
In 2018, the museum was the fifth most visited museum in the world and the second most visited museum in the United States.
Photo: Clemens Vasters / Flickr
USS Midway Museum in San Diego, California
The USS Midway Museum is a historical naval aircraft carrier museum. The USS Midway was the United States’ longest-serving aircraft carrier of the 20th century, from 1945 to 1992. Midway opened as a museum on 7 June 2004 and since then it has over 13,000 members, and hosts more than 700 events a year.
Photo: Salon NYC / Flickr
The National 9/11 Memorial & Museum in New York City
The National September 11 Memorial & Museum is a memorial and museum in commemorating the September 11, 2001 attacks, which killed 2,977 people. There are several monuments and other notable locations nearby, besides the memorial itself, that make this one of the most popular sites in NYC.
Photo: Michelle Lee / Flickr
Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois
The Art Institute of Chicago has grown into an internationally renowned institution, comprising a premier collection of art objects from around the globe and rated among the world’s top museums by TripAdvisor travelers. It contains the greatest collection of Impressionist paintings outside of Paris, including works by Monet, Renoir, Seurat, and Van Gogh.
Photo: Olivier Bruchez / Flickr
The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana
The National WWII Museum tells the story of the American experience in World War II. The museum founded in 2000, focuses on the contribution made by the United States to Allied victory in World War II. The museum maintains an affiliation with the Smithsonian Institution. The museum also has plans to open what will be called the Liberation Pavilion by 2020. Its goal would be to explore the “joys, costs, and meaning of liberation and freedom,”.
Photo: Franco Folini / Flickr
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City
Metropolitan Museum of Art is the largest art museum in the United States. It was the third most visited art museum in the world. The permanent collection consists of works of art from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt, paintings, and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern art.
Check some of our other posts for more tips and interesting places to visit in North America.
