Modern and contemporary art museums offer more than collections of paintings and sculpture. They are places to explore new ideas about form, materials, architecture, technology and the changing ways artists interpret the world around us.
From landmark institutions in New York and Los Angeles to museums occupying former industrial buildings, these museums provide very different experiences of modern and contemporary art. The following institutions are worth exploring for their collections, exhibitions, architecture and contributions to contemporary culture.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is one of the major museums of modern and contemporary art in the United States. Its collection spans painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, design and media arts.
The museum's building is itself part of the experience. The original Mario Botta building was substantially expanded by the architecture firm Snøhetta, creating a much larger museum with galleries extending across multiple floors.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York has played an important role in defining how modern art is collected, exhibited and understood. Its collection encompasses painting, sculpture, photography, film, architecture, design, drawings, prints and media.
The collection provides an extraordinary opportunity to see how artistic ideas developed from the late nineteenth century through modernism and into contemporary art.
Pérez Art Museum Miami is a contemporary and modern art museum overlooking Biscayne Bay in downtown Miami. Its collection and exhibitions have a particular emphasis on international art and the diverse cultures of Miami, the Americas and the Caribbean.
Designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the museum is also notable for its architecture. Deep overhangs, vegetation and open-air spaces respond to Miami's subtropical environment and create a strong relationship between the building and its waterfront setting.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago focuses on art created from the mid-twentieth century to the present. Its exhibitions encompass painting, sculpture, photography, installation, performance and new media.
The museum is particularly interesting for visitors who want to experience contemporary art as an evolving field rather than as a fixed historical period.
The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York concentrates on American art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Its collection includes painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, installation and works on paper.
The museum's Renzo Piano-designed building in Manhattan's Meatpacking District provides large galleries as well as outdoor terraces with views across the city. The Whitney Biennial, organized by the museum, has long provided a recurring look at developments in contemporary American art.
The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles is dedicated to contemporary art and maintains a collection of works created primarily since the 1940s.
MOCA operates exhibition spaces in downtown Los Angeles and has played an important role in documenting and presenting the development of contemporary art in Los Angeles as well as international artistic movements.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York is as famous for its architecture as it is for its collection. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the museum's spiraling interior challenged the conventional idea of a museum as a sequence of rectangular galleries.
Its collection encompasses important developments in modern and contemporary art, while the building demonstrates how architecture can fundamentally change the way visitors experience artwork and space.
The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston presents contemporary art across a wide range of media, including visual art, performance, film and digital work.
Its waterfront building, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, creates a distinctive relationship between the galleries, Boston Harbor and the surrounding city. The museum places particular emphasis on artists and ideas shaping contemporary culture.
Dia Beacon is located in a former industrial building in Beacon, New York, and presents works from Dia Art Foundation's collection, with a particular focus on art from the 1960s to the present.
The expansive galleries and natural light make the building particularly well suited to large-scale sculpture, installations and works that depend on the relationship between the object and the surrounding space.
Dia Beacon demonstrates how dramatically the experience of art can change when the architecture allows individual works to occupy substantial physical space.
The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, better known as MASS MoCA, occupies a vast complex of former industrial buildings in North Adams, Massachusetts.
Its enormous galleries make it possible to exhibit installations and large-scale works that would be difficult to present in a conventional museum. The industrial architecture remains an important part of the experience, creating a dialogue between contemporary artwork and the history and structure of the buildings themselves.
For anyone interested in sculpture, installation, materials and the relationship between art and architecture, MASS MoCA offers a particularly distinctive museum experience.
The boundaries between art, design and jewelry have never been completely separate. Contemporary jewelry can explore many of the same ideas found in sculpture and architecture, including form, proportion, structure, surface, material and the relationship between an object and the space around it.
Oliver Hampel's jewelry draws inspiration from nature, organic forms, architecture and structural patterns. Rather than reproducing these sources literally, Oliver translates them into sculptural forms, surfaces and details designed to be worn on the body.
Traditional metalsmithing is combined with contemporary processes and materials including sterling silver, 18K gold, gemstones, pearls and nylon. The result reflects an approach to jewelry in which craftsmanship and personal expression intersect with contemporary art and design.
Learn more about the artist and the ideas behind his work on Meet Oliver Hampel.
