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Saturday, April 26, 2008

Top museums you must visit

1- The Louvre in Paris is arguably the world's most famous Museum. It houses a wonderful collection of antiquities and European paintings, including Leonardo's Gioconda (Mona Lisa) and Madonna of the Rocks, Jacques Louis David's Oath of the Horatii, Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People and Alexandros of Antioch's Venus de Milo.


2- The Metropolitan Museum of Art (known as the Met) in New York was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986. Its spectacular permanent collection contains more than two million works of art and is especially strong in American painting and Egyptian Antiquities. The museum owns thirty-seven paintings by Monet, twenty-one oils by Cezanne, and eighteen Rembrandts. Other highlights include major drawings by Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, etchings by Durer and Degas, Van Gogh's Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat, Picasso's portrait of Gertrude Stein, Jasper Johns's White Flag, Jackson Pollock's Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), and five paintings by Vermeer, which represent the largest collection of the artist's work anywhere in the world.


3- The British Museum in London is England's greatest museum and one of the best in the world for Ancient Arts and antiquities. There are magnificent groups of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, (including his only surviving full-scale cartoon), Dürer (a collection of 138 drawings is one of the finest in existence), Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt, Claude and Watteau, and virtually complete collections of the works of all the great printmakers including unsurpassed holdings of prints by Dürer (99 engravings, 6 etchings and a substantial number of his 346 woodcuts), Rembrandt and Goya.


4- The Vatican Museums houses the immense and outstanding art collection of the Catholic Church. Pope Julius II founded the museums in the 16th century. The collection includes some of the most important works of art in history, such as the Sistine Chapel and Raphael's The School of Athens.


5- The Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia is one of the largest museums in the world, with 3 million works of art (not all on display at once), and one of the oldest art galleries and museums of human history and culture in the world. Catherine the Great started the famed collection in 1764. The vast Hermitage collections are displayed in six buildings, the main one being the Winter Palace which used to be the official residence of the Russian Tsars. The Hermitage holds the Guinness World Record as having the world's largest collection of paintings. Highlights include works by Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Rubens, Rembrandt, Canaletto, Rodin, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Cézanne, van Gogh (Night Café), Gauguin, Picasso, and Matisse (La Danse).


6- The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna is one of the premier museums in the world. It houses an important collection of Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities, and an outstanding collection of European paintings, including Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Blue Dress by Velázquez.


7- The National Gallery of London, founded in 1824, houses a rich collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. It is arguably the most complete collection of European painting from the 13th to the 19th centuries. Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers is one of many collection highlights.


8- The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York houses the world's best collection of modern and contemporary art, featuring masterworks such as Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon, Van Gogh's Starry Night, Dali’s The Persistence of Memory, Andy Warhols’ Campbell’s Soup Cans and Monet’s Water Lilies. It was developed in 1928 primarily by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller.


9- Museé d'Orsay in Paris is without doubt the best museum of impressionist and 19th century French painting in the world. Features masterworks include Manet’s Olympia and Luncheon on the Grass, Monet’s Rouen Cathedral, van Gogh’s Starry Night, Renoir’s Bal au Moulin de la Galette and Degas’ L’Absinthe.


10- The Egyptian Museum in Cairo is by far the most complete collection of Egyptian Art in the world. Its most famous artworks are the objects from the Tomb of Tutankhamen, discovered in 1922.


11- El Museo del Prado (Prado Museum) has one of the world's finest collections of European art, from the 12th century through the early 19th century, based on the former Spanish Royal Collection. The Prado features works by leading Spanish old masters like Velazquez and Goya. It is home to Las Meninas by Velazquez and once housed Pablo Picasso’s masterpiuece, Guernica.


12- The Uffizi, housed in the Palazzo degli Uffizi, a palazzo in Florence, Italy, is the most important collection of Italian Renaissance painting. It is home to works such as Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Primavera and Giotto's Ognissanti Madonna.


13- The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is one of the oldest and most respected Art institutions of North America, with an outstanding collection of Western Art. It has a sister museum in Japan, the Nagoya Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The Morse collection of 5,000 pieces of Japanese pottery, is part of the largest museum collection of Japanese works outside of Japan. The museum is also home to Gauguin’s iconic work "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?"


14- The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is Netherlands National Museum. As you can expect, it houses the world's most important collection of Dutch painting, including its star piece, Rembrandt's "The Nightwatch"


15- The National Gallery of Washington features an extremely complete collection of Western painting from the 13th to the 20th century. Highlights of the collection include many paintings by Jan Vermeer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Leonardo da Vinci, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Alexander Calder.


16- The Guggenheim Museum in New York was designed by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The Guggenheim Foundation also has important galleries in Bilbao, Venice, Berlin and Las Vegas.


17- The Tate Modern in London is arguably the most important collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe. It houses pivotal works of artists such as Lichstentein, Pollock, Rothko, Warhol and Francis Bacon


18- The Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris is France's national museum for modern and contemporary art, housed in an important contemporary building by Rogers and Renzo Piano.


19- The Art Institute of Chicago houses one of the most outstanding collections of Impressionist and American art, featuring masterpieces such as Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles and Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks.


20- The Getty Center in Malibu, California is arguably the world's wealthiest Museum, with an important collection of European antiquities, paintings, and manuscripts. Works exhibited includes Van Gogh's Irises and Titian's Alfonso d'Avalos.

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