Art Museums & Galleries

Massachusetts has a rich heritage of making and collecting art on display across the state in museums of all kinds.

The world-renowned Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has an encyclopedic collection that ranges from French Impressionists to ancient Egyptian art. The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) showcases contemporary art in its striking new building overlooking Boston Harbor. Across the Charles River in Cambridge, the Harvard Art Museums are home to works by Matisse, Picasso and Italian Renaissance masters in intimate galleries. And traveling north of metro Boston, Salem’s Peabody Essex Museum exhibits connections between art, architecture and culture.

Large-scale American sculpture is sited throughout the 35 acres of the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln. Worcester’s Art Museum, acknowledged as one of America’s leading small art museums, includes works by Cassatt, Gauguin, Goya, Monet, Sargent and Whistler. In Western Massachusetts, the Norman Rockwell Museum houses the largest collection of the illustrator’s original art, many from the Saturday Evening Post. Fuller Craft Museum is one of eight museums in the country specializing in contemporary craft.