Back Bay Station to Museum of Fine Arts Boston
With over 60 museums in and well-nigh the urban center, Boston offers a wealth of fascinating exhibits to explore, whatever your interests happen to be.
Yous'll find everything from antiquarian cars to 21st century electric vehicles, fossils to biotech, 17th century houses to 21st century design, Boston Tea Party artifacts to Crimson Sox memorabilia, Egyptian mummies to avant-garde sculpture.
Accept merely a 20 minutes or and so to spare?
In this article, we highlight 15 top Boston museums focused on a variety of interests such equally art, science, history, sports, technological innovations, and medicine. You'll also find family favorites, gratuitous museums, outdoor museums, and more.
Take a look - you may find some fun, fascinating, surprising, and irresistible new favorites.
Interested in seeing more than art in Boston? Bank check out our fine art galleries
Top photograph: Dale Chihuly blown glass & steel "Lime Green Icicle Tower" at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts
ane. Best Science Museum in Boston: Museum of Science
Yous'll experience science and applied science in a new way at the Museum of Scientific discipline, where a kaleidescope of visiting exhibitions, special presentations, and 700 or and then immersive exhibits lead you through a journeying of discovery.
Create your own tiny flying robot bee, see a biologically-inspired cheetah robot , and move your body to create simulations based on your movements in a special mirror. Journey to the by every bit you examine a 23-foot long, 65-million-year-erstwhile Triceratops skeleton. Explore the natural globe through a virtual tour of Arcadia National Park, observe mysterious environments, and walk among butterflies in a beautiful tropical solarium.
You'll find lots more hands-on experiences: electricity, evolution, transportation, animals, space exploration, wind energy, nanotechnology, cosmic exploration.
Add to this an onsite Imax theater and planetarium, and you tin easily spend an entire mean solar day here and nevertheless not accept enough time to enjoy it all.
Become skip-the-line tickets, or use a Go Boston Pass for free admission
1 Science Park | Light-green Line/Aquarium Station | 617-723-2500 | world wide web.mos.org
ii. All-time Boston History Museum: Tea Party Ships & Museum
Costumed actors, interactive displays, and lots of high tech and multimedia effects immerse you in history at the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum, bringing to life the events leading up to the American Revolution and making y'all experience like you're a part of the activity.
During your ane-hour tour of the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum, yous're taken dorsum in time to the momentous nighttime in December, 1773 when the Sons of Liberty touched off the American Revolution with their tea political party in Boston Harbor.
You'll exist entertained for sure, but you also get to participate, explore, and learn. After you leave, you'll be surprised by how much history you've effortlessly soaked up. In that location'due south nothing else quite like it in Boston. An unforgettable experience for adults every bit well as kids and teens.
More information & tickets for the Boston Tea Political party Ships & Museum
three. Best Immersive Museum: Plimouth Plantation
Plimouth Plantation, a living history museum, recreates the commencement Pilgrim settlement in North America begun in 1620 soon after the English immigrants stepped off the Mayflower. You lot tin can get tickets and get on your own, or join a modest-group day trip to Plimouth Plantation from Boston.
When you visit, you get to immerse yourself in a historically authentic hamlet with rough-hewn cabins, simple effects, and farm animals similar to those the Pilgrims brought with them.
The best part, though, is getting to chat with skilled office-histrion actors wearing historically accurate clothing who bring to life the real people who made their homes here - Edward Winslow, Susanna Fuller White, William Bradford, and other English settlers. Enquire them questions, and they'll tell yous almost their lives and culture as yous explore this re-created 17th village overlooking the h2o.
Y'all volition also come across traditionally-attired descendants of the native Wampanoag people who fabricated the Pilgrims' survival possible, and learn about their civilization.
Get your tickets
Find out about joining a modest-group day trip to Plimouth Plantation from Boston
4. Best World-Course Art Museum: Museum of Fine Arts
With hundreds of galleries filled with treasures from the aboriginal world to contemporary art, Boston's Museum of Fine Artstin easily proceed you enthralled for an entire solar day, specially if you take a few breaks to sample MFA's various dining options, scan the vast bookstore and specialized boutiques, and perhaps have in 1 of the special activities such as a tour, film, or performance.
Nonetheless, if you desire to focus on the superb globe-grade collections that set MFA apart, here are five places to beginning:
- Art of the Americas: Filling a spectacular new fly, this vast collection covers the Pre-Columbian menstruation through the belatedly 20th century. What makes it outstanding is non only the exquisite and seldom-seen art from South and Fundamental America and the Caribbean, merely as well the broad-ranging examples from North America, displayed to bear witness y'all connections and continuity between cultures and across fourth dimension. The Decorative Arts rooms featuring period effects are outstanding.
- Egyptian: Considered one of the best in the world, MFA's exceptional collection of mummies, statues, pottery, and other artifacts bring to life almost four millenniums of Egyptian civilisation.
- Japanese Buddhist Temple Room: Based on an 8th century monastery in Japan, MFA created this special gallery to display Buddhist deities 100+ years ago. Information technology'due south office of MFA'south much larger Japanese collection. Too, don't miss the Japanese contemplative garden located in a secluded corner outside the museum.
- African: MFA'southward collection of West African masks, sculptures, funeral artifacts, and other art includes some fine examples of masks, funereal reliquaries, and sculpture.
- Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Fine art: This is where you'll find MFA'due south growing collection of today'due south fine art, with a focus on internationally renowned artists in a broad range of media. Displays change frequently, and in addition to more traditional forms such every bit paintings and sculpture, you typically will also see video, new media, crafts, and very large scale pieces, as well as live interactive performances.
Become skip-the-line tickets, or use a Go Boston Pass for gratis admission
465 Huntington Ave; 617-297-9300; www.mfa.org
five. All-time Art Collector's Personal Museum: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
After an inheritance allowed Isabella Stewart Gardner to amp upward her passion for collecting art, she and her husband Jack ran out of display space in their Beacon Street home and decided to build an fine art museum with living quarters for their ain use. They spent the summertime of 1897 in their favorite Italian cities collecting columns, statues, windows, and other decorative details from Roman, Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance periods for it, and shipped them home to Boston.
Jack died unexpectedly in 1898, but Isabella forged forrad with their plans and directed every detail with the work in a hands-on way. By 1902, she installed the fine art.
The result? A surprisingly harmonious and stunningly beautiful creation resembling a 15th century Venetian palazzo with a spectacular interior courtyard and wonderful art to diverse to describe.
If you have any interest in art or blueprint, a visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is a must!
Free access if your name is Isabella. Gratuitous admission on your birthday.
25 Evans Way, Fenway neighborhood; 617-566-1401; world wide web.gardnermuseum.org
half dozen. All-time Gimmicky Art Gallery: ICA Boston
The Constitute of Gimmicky Fine art - ICA Boston - focuses on identifying and presenting the almost significant, thought-provoking, and sometime controversial and provocative contemporary fine art from emerging and established artists.
Only it'southward more than than merely a museum. Visit ICA Boston, and you lot'll observe a jiff-taking space on the Due south Boston Waterfront filled with performances, films and videos, presentations, and galleries filled with contemporary artists' explorations of the physical and unseen world.
Detect out more virtually ICA Boston
7. Best Outdoor Museum: deCordova Sculpture Park & Museum
Walk around the deCordova Sculpture Park & Museum's 30-acre outdoor infinite, and you'll see a fantastic diverseness of modernistic and gimmicky outdoor sculpture in a variety of settings: forests, lawns, fields, gardens, and terraces overlooking Flint'southward Pond in Lincoln, near 20 miles due west of Boston.
At any point, you lot'll see about 60 sculptures on display from the museum'due south permanent collection, sculptures on loan, and special site-specific works and commissions.
The park appeals to all ages.
51 Sandy Pond Road, Lincoln; 617-424-9700; decordova.org
8. All-time Museum for Families: Harvard Museum of Natural History
Your unabridged family unit will exist mesmerized past the Harvard Museum of Natural History's huge 42 pes-long Kronosaurus skeleton, brilliant gems and minerals, and mounted wildlife specimums. Y'all can explore ecology in multimedia exhibits, watch fruits decay from blight, rot, and other diseases, and gaze at a drove of hundreds of colorful beetles.
A must-come across exhibit is the museum's dazzling "Glass Flowers"display from their collection of 4,300 Blaschka glass models of plants, created by a father-son team of Czech artists in Dresden betwixt 1886 and 1936.
More to savour nearby: Walk over to Harvard Square for a repast, shopping, or sightseeing. Y'all tin also walk around the Harvard campus or get an insider's perspective nearly campus life with a pupil-led campus bout.
Costless admission with Boston CityPASS and Go Boston Pass. Free admission for Massachusetts residents (ID required) on Sun mornings 9am-12 apex, and Wednesdays 3pm-5pm from September through May. Also costless for K-12 Massachusetts teachers and active duty military.
25 Oxford Street, Cambridge | Red Line/Harvard Station | 617-495-3045 | world wide web.harvard.edu
9. Best Museum for Kids: Boston Children'due south Museum
For the two-to-10 year quondam crowd (and their families), the Boston Children's Museum is the superlative favorite among all Boston museums.
Children love the hands-on interactive exhibits considering they seem like a playground. Exhibits are designed to encourage children to explore and learn about the world around them. And with 20+ permanent interactive, easily-on exhibits and activities, you lot (and your kids) will find a lot to exercise in this museum.
Notice out about the top things to do at the Boston Children's Museum
10. Best Boston Museum for Sports Fans: The Sports Museum
The Sports Museum's one-half-mile of exhibits featuring team shirts and other memorabilia, artifacts, and photos pay tribute to Boston's love of sports. Visits are by tour merely (virtually last about an hour), during which yous get to see all the displays and hear about Boston pro teams, by and present. The Red Sox, Bruins, Celtics, New England Patriots, and New England Revolution teams share much of the spotlight.
The Sports Museum is located on Levels 5 and vi of TD Garden.
Free access for kids half-dozen and under, and active duty military and their families (war machine ID required).
Located in TD Garden, 100 Legends Style; Nearest T station: Green & Orange Lines/North Station; 617-624-1231; sportsmuseum.org
eleven. Best Alive Exhibit Museum: The New England Aquarium
Maybe you don't ordinarily think of The New England Aquarium as a museum, but recall of information technology this way: it brings together collections of a variety of species related to a item topic - marine life - and immerses you in ways both entertaining and educational. Equally a bonus, so to speak, everything yous look at here is alive and displayed in its natural (although re-created) habitat.
located on Boston's downtown waterfront immerses yous in some other world where you can experience a giant coral reef and its colorful tropical fish, laugh at playful penguins, and can even meet and greet seals and ocean lions on behind-the-scenes tours.
Designed to appeal to all ages, the aquarium is one of Boston'due south very top attractions for visitors equally well as locals. It'due south the perfect place to visit on less-optimal weather days, and even better when the sun is shining and you can bask its expansive views of Boston Harbor.
Get your skip-the-line ticket to the Aquarium at present
More near visiting the New England Aquarium
12. Best Applied science & Innovation Museum: MIT Museum
Interactive technology and science exhibits feature holograms, robotics, innovative engineering, oceanographic research, scientific instruments, photography, and more than.
It's easy to immerse yourself for hours here among the holograms, artificial intelligence demonstrations, and digital art.
Displays alter frequently, and revolving series of special installations ways there's e'er something new and exciting to see - self-driving electric cars, interactive gestural technology, demonstrations of kinetics and motility.
Great place for kids as well as adults.
A movement in 2022 to a new, much larger space in at 314 Primary Street in Kendall Square means more than galleries likewise as performance spaces and an onsite bookstore and cafe - so stay tuned!
265 Mass Ave, Cambridge; Red Line/Key Square; 617-253-5927; website
xiii. Best Historic House Museums
These house museums span several centuries of Boston life, and can exist seen during guided tours.
If you're a fan of house museums, Boston offers excellent opportunities to visit 17th, 18th, and 19th century homes of prominent citizens. Here are four of the best:
17th Century: Paul Revere House
Built in 1677-1680, Paul Revere House in the N End was virtually 100 years old when the prominent silversmith and Sons of Liberty fellow member moved there with his wife and their large family in 1770. This is the only house museum on the Freedom Trail.
The Tudor-way abode is the oldest firm in central Boston, and you can withal see some of Revere's furniture, pieces of silver, and other household items. One room is furnished in a tardily 17th century manner.
Free admission with a GoBoston carte du jour
More than near the Paul Revere House Museum
18th Century: First Harrison Grey Otis Firm
Designed in 1796 by famous Boston architect Charles Bulfinch, Federal-style Otis House has been through an all-encompassing restoration based on meticulous historical and scientific research, and so you will see the bright colors, fancy effects, and mirrored doors enjoyed by Boston's upper course in the tardily 1700s - early on 1800s. Don't miss the fascinating architectural museum in the basement.
141 Cambridge Street, West Cease; Nearest T station: Cherry Line-Charles/MGH; 617-994-5920; www.historicnewengland.org/property/otis-house
19th Century: Nichols House
Even though Nichols House is another Federal-style business firm designed by Charles Bulfinch in 1804, you'll go a different vibe from Otis House. The business firm gets its name from garden designer and voting rights activist Rose Standish Nichols, who lived in the house between 1885 and 1960 and bequeathed it as a museum afterward her expiry. Information technology contains effects and art from several generations of her family, including pieces past 19th century sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
55 Mount Vernon Street, Beacon Hill; Nearest T station: Red Line-Charles/MGH; 617-227-6993; www.nicholshousemuseum.org
19th Century: Gibson House
Built in 1859 on Buoy Street in Italian Renaissance style, Gibson Firm shows you a snapshot of Victorian Brahman Boston, thanks to a 1930s decision by then-possessor and writer Charles Gibson Jr to preserve the house and its lavish contents where three generations of his family lived until his own death in 1954.
During a guided tour of the four floors, you lot'll see embossed wallpapers, elaborately carved walnut staircases, massive Victorian mahogany piece of furniture and gilded picture frames, decorative art from around the world, and lots of dark reds, wall-to-wall carpets, and fringe - all testimony to Boston'southward Golden Age. Seeing the period kitchen and 1902 bathroom are worth the price of admission. Equally many as seven servants kept the house in order.
Gibson Business firm will wait remarkably familiar if you've seen the 1983 Merchant-Ivory movie, The Bostonians, which was filmed here.
137 Buoy Street, Back Bay; Nearest T station: Light-green Line-Arlington; 617-267-6338; world wide web.thegibsonhouse.org
fourteen. Best Library Art Collection: Boston Public Library
Although non a museum, the 1895 Renaissance Revival-style Boston Public Library is crammed with spectacular museum-quality paintings, tapestries, architectural details, and sculpture.
A 2d-floor gallery features dream-similar murals painted past French artist Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, and are his merely murals on brandish exterior of France. On the third floor, you'll find a series of John Singer Sargent murals called The Triumph of Religion painted in the fashion of Italian Renaissance frescoes that are totally unlike his famous gild paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts.
Free admission; free art and architectural tours available too. More information
Another Library with Outstanding Art: Boston Athenaeum
Boston Athenaeum, a members-only library on Beacon Hill, dates back to 1807 and boasts huge collections of rare books and fine art. To visit, join one of the art and architecture tours offered to the public two-3 times each week. More information
15. Best Medical Museums: Warren Medical Museum & The Ether Dome
The dazzling copper and drinking glass Paul South. Russell, Dr. Museum of Medical History and Innovation at Massachusetts General Hospital celebrates the medical institution's 200+ years of innovations and contributions to medicine and health care.
Displays feature the hospital'southward medical breakthroughs and innovations; frequent updates show yous the latest technologies and medical approaches. On the third floor, a beautiful roof top garden gives yous wonderful skyline views of Beacon Hill.
After exploring the exhibits and mayhap soaking upwards some dominicus in the garden, wind your mode through the hospital circuitous to the Bulfinch Building where yous'll observe the Ether Dome, the historic surgical amphitheater in MGH's Bulfinch Edifice where anesthesia (ether) was first used successfully to block pain during surgery in 1846.
The Ether Dome is where you'll discover MGH'south oldest resident, Padihershef, an almost 3,000 year former Egyptian mummy who has been hither since 1823. The room also contains his sarcophagus, a human skeleton, and some early on (and blench-worthy) medical instruments.
Free admission.
ii North Grove Street (at MGH, intersection of Cambridge and Grove Streets) | Subway station: Red Line/MGH-Charles St | 617-724-8009 | www.massgeneral.org/museum
More Boston Museums
Boston Burn Museum
Located in a historic granite, brick, and red tile Romanesque-style edifice, this pocket-size museum exhibits a mitt-operated pumper dating from 1793, a steam pumper from 1882, and a ladder truck from 1860. Combine with a visit to nearby Boston Children's Museum. Open Fridays 5pm-8pm and Saturdays 9:30am - 4pm. Complimentary admission.
334 Congress Street, Fort Point: Subway: Silvery Line/Courthouse, or walk over from Carmine Line: S Station; www.bostonfiremuseum.com
Lars Anderson Machine Museum
Located in the original wagon business firm, this Boston museum features America's oldest car collection, gorgeous grounds, spectacular Boston skyline views, and a public water ice skating rink open up in the winter.
15 Newton Street, Brookline, MA; 617-522-6547; www.larzanderson.org
Harvard Fine art Museums
A spectacular new complex designed past Renzo Piano provides space to the collection of three Harvard museums: The Fogg Art Museum (British pre-Raphaelite, Italian Renaissance, and French art), the Sackler Museum (Islamic, Turkish, and East Asian art), and the Busch-Reisinger Museum (Germanic fine art).
32 Quincy Street, Cambridge; Subway: Red Line/Harvard; harvardartmuseums.org
McMullen Museum of Art
Global collections include Gothic and Baroque tapestries, 16th and 17th century Italian paintings, and American paintings. Terrific special exhibits. Located on the Boston Higher campus.
Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Ave, Devlin Hall 108, Chestnut Loma, MA; 617-552-8587; www.bc.edu - click on museum link
Rose Art Museum
This small museum's outstanding collection of mod and contemporary fine art is the best in New England, with particular strength in American artists of the 1960s and 1970s. Come here for abstract expressionists, conceptual artists, and pop art . . . modernism, surrealism, social realism, photorealism, color field painting, minimalism. Exhibits rotate, and then unfortunately, you'll seldom see much of this collection at in one case. The museum also features shows past gimmicky artists, both emerging and established.
The Rose Fine art Museum belongs to Brandeis University, and closes during the summer, semester breaks, and other school holidays. Always check the current schedule on the website before coming.
Brandeis University, 415 Southward Street, Waltham; 781-736-3434; www.brandeis.edu/rose
Republic Museum
See one of the 14 original copies of the Annunciation of Independence and the U.Southward. Beak of Rights, the state's constitution, the 1629 lease of the Company of the Massachusetts Bay, and more.
Located in the State Archives Building beyond from the Kennedy Museum, 220 Morrissey Boulevard, Dorchester; 617-727-9268
Boston Holocaust Memorial
Created by Nazi Holocaust survivors in the Boston area, the memorial's half dozen glass towers symbolize the major decease camps. Half dozen one thousand thousand names are etched in the towers, designed to also resemble a menorah.
More about Boston Holocaust Memorial
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum
Dedicated to the retention of the 35th American president, this I.Thousand. Pei museum overlooking the Boston waterfront presents multi-media "you are there" exhibits well-nigh Kennedy's life and times.
Columbia Point, Dorchester, Boston; 617-514-1600; www.jfklibrary.org
Museum of African American History
Housed in historic Abiel Smith Schoolhouse on the Black Heritage Trail, the Museum of Afro-American History features rotating exhibits well-nigh Colonial period African-American Bostonians.
46 Joy Street at Smith Court intersection, Beacon Hill, Boston; www.afroammuseum.org
One-time S Meeting House Museum
Interactive exhibits give life to history in this old Puritan place of worship on the Freedom Trail, a museum since 1878, where many of the speeches and events leading up to the American Revolution took identify.
More almost Sometime South Meeting House Museum
Erstwhile State House Museum
Explore two floors of interactive, hands-on exhibitions nearly the function played by the Old Country Business firm in the Boston Tea Party and the Boston Massacre - events leading upwardly to the American Revolution. Likewise a Freedom Trail site.
More about Erstwhile State House Museum
Peabody Museum of Archeology & Ethnology
Founded in 1866 and one of the oldest museums in the world devoted to anthropology and human cultural history, many of the Peabody'south exhibits and lectures focus on Native American communities and customs.
11 Divinity Ave, Cambridge, MA; website
Vilna Shul
Vilna Shul, built as a synagogue in 1919 by Jewish immigrants from Lithuania and now Boston'due south Center for Jewish Culture and a Jewish heritage museum, commemorates the history of this part of Beacon Hill (once role of the W Stop), and the Eastern European Jewish community in Boston. Restored murals, layers of history, and interesting informational displays.
18 Phillips St, Beacon Hill, Boston; world wide web.vilnashul.org
USS Constitution
The wooden USS Constitution built in 1793 is the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world. Nicknamed "Old Ironsides" after repelling British cannonballs in the War of 1812, this send-museum is wildly pop with kids.
More near visiting the USS Constitution
More Manufactures near Art in Boston
- Boston Public Library - See all the art and architectural treasures in this historic renaissance revival masterpiece
- Boston Art Galleries - More places where you lot can see art in Boston
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Source: https://www.boston-discovery-guide.com/boston-museums.html