13 Art Trips You Need To Take

Featured on forbes.com

One of our favorite things to do on a trip is to visit a top-notch museum, whether we see a blockbuster exhibit by an internationally known artist or we stumble upon a little-known institution with an exciting collection. Our Forbes Travel Guide editors give you the list of new exhibits, museum openings and hidden gem museums that should help you craft your own masterpiece of an art trip this year.

Destination: Florence

What to see: Every art lover ought to make the obligatory pilgrimages to the Uffizi and Galleria dell’Accademia. But discover lesser-known spots like the Bargello sculpture museum; Palazzo Pitti, which includes the lovely Boboli Gardens; Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, which holds overflow art from the Duomo; and Museo Salvatore Ferragamo, which has a luxe footwear collection from the Florentine designer.

Where to stay: Four Seasons Hotel Florence is an art aficionado’s dream. Formerly a Renaissance palace and convent, the hotel is covered with stunning restored frescoes, bas-reliefs, stuccoes and silk wallpaper that date back five centuries. The lobby courtyard, which is now enclosed, is a standout with 12 bas-relief sections illustrating classical and mythological tales. And a lush 11-acre garden—the largest private garden in the city—is dotted with intriguing sculptures.

Destination: New York City

What to see: The Whitney Museum of American Art made a splash with its new Renzo Piano-designed ship-shaped building in May 2015, but now the focus is on upcoming exhibits, like the provocative “Laura Poitras” (Feb. 5 to May 15, 2016). The exhibition will look at themes like NSA surveillance and post-9/11 America that are found in filmmaker-journalist Poitras’ work (she’s best known for directing the Citizenfour documentary with Edward Snowden).

Where to stay: Close to the Whitney and Chelsea galleries, The Jade Hotel Greenwich Village provides an Art Deco-inspired respite. The Forbes Travel Guide Recommended hotel’s rooms come with beds and desks made of shiny Macassar ebony wood, fetching jewel-toned Art Deco wallpaper and retro amenities like rotary telephones and Tivoli radios.

Destination: Colorado Springs

What to see: The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center is an undiscovered arts-and-culture treasure. The center comprises a museum with more than 20,000 works, a theater and an art school. It has unexpected offerings, like yoga classes in a light-filled hall as well as an innovative Tactile Gallery where you’re encouraged to touch the art. It carries key pieces like Walt Kuhn’s Trio and Arthur Dove’sFog Horns, but we’re partial to the Western-themed art, like Rocky Rodgers’ Arranged Paint, a striking portrait of an elder Native American man whose weathered face has more crags than nearby Pikes Peak.

Where to stay: The Broadmoor is the best place stay, and not only because it’s a Five-Star hotel. Owner Philip Anschutz has one the world’s largest collections of Western art, many of which adorn The Broadmoor’s walls. Take a complimentary hotel art tour or let the Rockies inspire you to create your own works; The Broadmoor offers painting, photography and drawing classes as well as art retreats.

Destination: Tacoma

What to see: Dale Chihuly fans should make the trip to the distinctive stainless-steel dome that houses Tacoma’s Museum of Glass. Don’t miss the Chihuly Bridge of Glass, a 500-foot steel-and-glass pedestrian bridge with installations that leads from the MOG’s rooftop to the downtown museum district. Visit “Chihuly’s Venetians: The George R. Stroemple Collection” (through Jan. 4, 2016) to see the artist’s fanciful take on Venetian vessels.

Where to stay: Hotel Murano’s Venice on the Sound package will score you two tickets to the exhibition and a photo book keepsake, among other perks. But this Four-Star hotel is a glass art destination unto itself: Take a docent-led tour of pieces from 45 artists from 12 countries. In the lobby, it looks like an invisible woman slipped on Czech Republic-based artist Karen LaMonte’s white cast-glass Pianist’s Dress, and in the Grand Corridor, a fleet of multi-colored Norse boats from Danish artist Vibeke Skov hangs high above.

Destination: San Francisco

What to see: The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will reopen in spring 2016 with a new 10-story addition. Expect expansive free-admission areas, a glass-walled gallery that will be visible to passersby, a seventh-floor terrace with city vistas and a third-floor outdoor sculpture terrace with a vertical garden that will be San Francisco’s biggest public living wall of native plants.

Where to stay:The St. Regis San Francisco is the ideal base for your trip—SFMOMA is next door and the Museum of the African Diaspora is inside the Five-Star hotel. Plus, The St. Regis boasts its own collection of about 600 pieces. Check out Canadian Andrew Morrow’s Loveand War, two large rusty-hued murals in the style of dramatic realism that face each other in the lobby.

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