Take a day, just you and your loved ones and friends, to hop on a train or in a car to see the newest stunning exhibitions outside of New York City. You’d be surprised what you can find within a four-hour drive, outside of NYC’s best art galleries.
Don’t forget to reserve your tickets ahead of time and be ready to adhere to each museum’s safety protocols.
Bon voyage and happy art hunting!
Mass MoCA
Located in North Adams, Massachusetts amid the rolling countryside of Berkshire County, Mass MoCA takes up a rambling complex of former 19th-century factory buildings spread across 13 acres. Nearly 200,000 square feet is given over to exhibition space for contemporary art, but that’s not all: There’s an 850-seat theater, an outdoor concert area that can accommodate upwards of 9,000 people, plus an amphitheater, various rehearsal studios and artists’ workshops.
Storm King Art Center
This 500-acre landscape of fields, hills and woodlands is home to one of the finest sculpture parks anywhere, boasting a collection of more than 100 outdoor works by some of the biggest names, including Louise Bourgeois, Mark di Suvero and David Smith.
Wave Hill
A 28-acre public garden and cultural center in the Bronx overlooking the Hudson River and Palisades, Wave Hill offers many natural pleasures, including a magnificent stand of pines, a formal garden and a hiking trail running through the woods. But there’s also art, which can be found on the grounds or in Wave Hill’s main space, the Glyndor Gallery.
Grounds for Sculpture
Grounds For Sculpture was founded by artist and philanthropist Seward Johnson and opened in 1992 on what used to be the New Jersey State Fairgrounds and was a natural extension of its predecessor, The Johnson Atelier. Across 42 verdant acres, there are about 300 contemporary sculptures and indoors, six galleries hold temporary exhibitions.
Art Omi
Art Omi sits on 120 acres in the Hudson Valley and peppered over its landscape are large-scale works and a 1,500-square-foot gallery. The Sculpture & Architecture Park currently offers more than 60 works by artists and architects that are changed each year.
Dia: Beacon
The aptly name Dia: Beacon is indeed a signal destination for fans of contemporary art—or anyone else, for that matter. Located just up the river from New York in Dutchess County, Dia: Beacon, serves as the sprawling showcase for the Dia Art Foundation’s unparalleled collection of Minimalist Art.
Olana State Historic Site
This stunning home that used to belong to artist and explorer Frederic Church will stop you in your tracks. Olana, which is the “old Latin name for a place in Persia, to which the artist’s home bears some resemblance in situation,” was where Church lived full time in the 1890s and painted during and after his training with artist Thomas Cole.
Parrish Art Museum
Founded in 1898 by Samuel Longstreth Parrish as a one-room exhibition hall in Southampton Village, this major art museum in the Hamptons is now a massive facility in Water Mill that presents about 15 temporary exhibitions each year, or about 3,000 works, including special exhibitions and group shows.
Philadelphia Museum of Art
It’s not every institution that can claim an association with Sylvester Stallone and Marcel Duchamp, but Philly’s premier museum is able to do just that. As for Duchamp, the museum owns two of his enigmatic masterpieces “The Large Glass” and “Étant donnés,” which you could say respectively represent the Mona Lisa and Sistine Ceiling of 20th-century Conceptual Art.
The Dan Flavin Art Institute
Located in an old firehouse that also once housed a Baptist church, The Dan Flavin Art Institute is one of several artist-project sites maintained by the Dia Art Foundation across the country.
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
The fall, leaf-peeping season is the time most people think of going to Ridgefield, CT, but summer is just as lovely, and it’s worth the trip just to visit this museum devoted to contemporary art—one the first of its kind in the country. It was founded in 1964 by fashion designer Larry Aldrich (1906–2001), who sold his collection of Picasso, Miró, Chagall, Paul Klee among others to pay for the property: A former church and general store dating from the 18th century.
