Think you’ve already viewed the best in class? Expand your must- visit list of world-class museums with this selection of spectacular institutions around the globe!
Singapore
ArtScience Museum
Built as part of Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands Resort, the world’s first art and science museum features an unusual lotus-shaped structure. While it hosts several leading travelling exhibitions from around the world, its new permanent exhibition Future World showcases 16 incredible art installations and is said to be the country’s largest interactive digital playground, exploring themes including nature, town, park and space.
Japan
Chichu Art Museum
Japan’s ‘art island’, tiny Naoshima boasts a disproportionate number of world-class installations, unexpected cultural distractions and world-class museums. In the latter category, Chichu Art Museum is built mostly underground – so as not to sully the island’s largely unblemished beauty – and features vast exhibition spaces largely built to complement the artworks by the likes of Monet and Walter De Maria, which they now house.
Sweden
Bildmuseet
The contemporary art and design museum in the Swedish city of Umea, the former residence of Stieg Larsson (author of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and others from the Millennium book/film trilogy) and European Capital of Culture for 2014, was named as one of the most beautiful university art galleries in the world following a redesign in 2012. The building itself is a thoughtful work of art, made with a facade of Siberian larch wood panelling, which will fade to a silver grey colour in a few years’ time, staggered with randomly-placed windows.
Its stark white interior is warmed by the natural light piercing through its windows, which offer scenic views from the museum’s riverside location.
Amsterdam
Rijksmuseum
The Dutch national treasure-house of art has at last re-opened after a decade-long renovation. Golden Age masterpieces by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Frans Hals and so many more are on show alongside centuries’ worth of fine furniture, Delftware, costume and jewellery. There’s a superb Asian collection, and new acquisitions that bring the display up to the present day.
Croatia and Los Angeles
Museum of Broken Relationships
Described as a “genuinely touching window on the human soul” by Telegraph Travel’s Chris Leadbeater, the brilliant attraction showcases a bizarre collection of objects connected to romances that are no more. Subtly illustrating the tragicomedy that is love, it is now one of Zagreb’s most visited museums.
The museum opened its second branch last year in the City of Broken Dreams – Hollywood. The new collection of items studying failed relationships and their ruins follows in the footsteps of the original one in Zagreb, promising to take visitors on an emotional journey through a showcase of 115 unwanted artefacts from relationships past, exploring the “love, pain, drama, irony, humour and reconciliation” of break ups.
