An Art Lover's Road Trip: 3 Itineraries
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT
Eager for a change of scenery? Us too. So we did a little research and were delighted to stumble upon 101 Art Destinations in the U.S: Where Art Lives Coast to Coast. Written before the pandemic, the author, Owen Phillips, was certainly ahead of his time as the US is now experiencing a resurgence of interest in the classic American road trip. In his book, Phillips shares road trip itineraries per region and includes popular destinations and off-the-beaten-path treasures that are open to the public. The destinations and works featured are diverse in geography and media, representing contributions to the arts by an equally varied and inclusive range of artists.
Below you’ll find three of Phillips’ itineraries for New England, the Midwest and Southwest. Pack your bags and we'll see you there!
New England Itinerary
7 DAYS (LEAVING FROM BOSTON)
A jam-packed week with 10 museums, 5 historic artists’ studios, and views that inspired some of America’s best painters
DAY 1: In Boston, go to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts. Be sure to see Winslow Homer’s The Fog Warning and Driftwood at the latter. Go visit Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, with its depiction of African American volunteer soldiers marching off to the Civil War, in Boston Common.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA
DAY 2: In the morning, head on I-95 all the way to the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, about 3 hours. Here you’ll see the new Alex Katz wing, which includes lots of his Maine paintings, and work by Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and Terry Winters. Head over to any nice town in the Southern Penobscot Bay to stay the night.
DAY 3: In the morning, visit the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland and the Olson Housein Cushing (yes—have your picture taken posed as Christina Olson crawling up the hill). Then check out the Langlais Sculpture Preserve nearby. An hour and a half down Highway 1 is Portland, where you can tour the Winslow Homer Studio, situated along the coast he painted many times late in life, and see works by more great Maine painters at the Portland Museum of Art.
The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA
DAY 4: Lots of driving, but worth it: take I-95 back down to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and cut over to Dartmouth College (about 2 and a half hours) to see the José Clemente Orozco murals at the Hood Museum of Art . Then it’s a quick jump down to the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site—the artist’s home and studio, run by the National Park Service—where you can see the original maquette for the Shaw Memorial, as well as a cast of the haunting Adams Memorial. Head down to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and plan to stay a couple nights in the Berkshires.
DAYS 5 AND 6: You’ll be busy. The Clark Art Institute is the star of the museums in the area, and Chesterwood, the summer home and studio of Saint-Gaudens’s rival, Daniel Chester French, is a grand mansion and studio in Stockbridge that’s not to be missed. (French designed the Lincoln Memorial here and its maquette is on display.) Nearby is the Norman Rockwell Museum, devoted to illustration, which also includes his home and studio, and the curiosity of Frelinghuysen Morris House and Studio, a Bauhaus-style dwelling for a couple of bon vivant arts patrons devoted to French modernism.
DAY 7: Cross back to Boston (take a bathroom break at the Smith College Museum of Art, where the restrooms are site-specific works by Ellen Driscoll and Sandy Skoglund) and finish the week at the Harvard Art Museums.
Rust Belt Itinerary
5 DAYS (LEAVING FROM DETROIT)
Temples to culture from the golden age of American industry and a few revolutionaries and visionaries.
DAY 1: You’ll want a full day to spend at the Detroit Institute of Arts and its Diego Rivera murals. But make a quick trip to the Heidelberg Project to see how art responds—and uplifts—amid urban blight.
Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, MO.
DAY 2: It’s a little more than an hour to Toledo, where the Toledo Museum of Art celebrates the city’s main product—glass. Its Glass Pavilion by Japanese architecture firm SANAA is a work of art in its own right. Another couple hours gets you to Cleveland, where there’s another great encyclopedic museum from the Gilded Age with must-see paintings by Caravaggio, Picasso, and Turner. In Willard Park, next to City Hall, check out Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’s 50-foot-tall Free Stamp.
DAY 3: Leave the Lake Eerie shore and drive 2 hours to Pittsburgh. Here, visit the Andy Warhol Museum (the basement Factory section is especially fun for kids), the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the rambunctious Mattress Factory.
DAY 4: Head north to Buffalo, New York, about 3 hours, to visit the Albright-Knox Art Gallery—a museum that has collected “contemporary art” since it was founded in the first years of the twentieth century. Across the street is the Burchfield Penney Art Center, a museum devoted to the visionary and hallucinatory work of underrated American painter Charles Burchfield.
DAY 5: Drive back across the north shore of Lake Eerie toward Detroit. If there’s time, a worthy side trip is to the museum at the Cranbrook Academy of Art and the Art Deco masterpiece of a house designed by Eliel and Loja Saarinen, parents of Eero.
Southwestern Itinerary
10 DAYS (LEAVING FROM LOS ANGELES)
A crazy adventure. Build the entire thing around stays at A-Z West in Joshua Tree and The Lightning Field in New Mexico if you can get them. Bring camping equipment and plenty of water.
DAY 1: Start in Los Angeles, where there’s too much to see to include in this itinerary—but if you make one stop on the way out of town, make it the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where you can take in Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass and Chris Burden’s Urban Light—two undeniable monuments of the West—without even going inside. Head out of town into the desert about 3 hours toward Joshua Tree to visit the Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum. If you’ve made an appointment, make your visit to Andrea Zittel’s A-Z West; it’s a harder get, but it’s possible to stay over in her experimental living pods for a real immersive experience.
Georgia O’Keeffe’s Home and Studio, Abiquiú, NM
DAY 2: Drive about 4 hours to Phoenix to experience the Heard Museum, known for both traditional and contemporary Native American arts. Just out of town is an unusual Skyspace, James Turrell’s Air Apparent, set in the middle of a rock garden by landscape architect Christy Ten Eyck and inspired by architecture of the region’s ancient Hohokam people. Go in the evening, of course.
DAY 3: It’s a long-haul day, but you can make it to Santa Fe in a little over 7 hours. Make it in time for the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and double check your arrangements to visit her home and studio in Abiquiú for a look at Ghost Ranch, where she also once lived, and drive the countryside in search of vistas she made famous. The Girard Wing at the Museum of International Folk Art displays the fascinating collection of dolls and toys from all around the world by the prolific midcentury designer Alexander Girard.
DAYS 4 AND 5: Drive an hour north to Taos and set up a home base to explore the Taos Pueblo and the many small museums dedicated to the artists who have come and gone from the Taos art colony, including Agnes Martin, who has a chapel-like space complete with Donald Judd stools at the Harwood Museum of Art. Light and Space artist Larry Bell, who still works here, might let you take a tour of his studio.
Clyfford Still Museum, Denver, CO
DAY 6: If you’ve built your trip around a rare reservation to stay at Walter De Maria’s The Lightning Field in northwestern New Mexico, do it now. Try to score a visit to Charles Ross’s Star Axis, a piece of land art and architecture some forty years in the making. If not, head about 5 hours north to Denver. The big hit here is the Clyfford Still Museum, a brilliantly put together museum dedicated to the abstract expressionist most in tune with the west. The Denver Art Museum has one of the best collections of western and Native American art in the country.
DAY 7: Take a quick look at the Kirkland Museum of Fine and Decorative Art, which celebrates many lesser-known abstract painters from the region in a midcentury modern design setting. And then head west out of town in time to set up camp, weather permitting, in Utah’s Sego Canyon.
DAY 8: Explore thousands of years of ancient rock art in Sego Canyon and nearby Horseshoe Canyon. The hikes are not difficult from the parking lots. Break camp and head north to Salt Lake City.
DAY 9: Go to the Spiral Jetty, Robert Smithson’s land art masterpiece. Then eat, check your flashlights and water supply, and work your way around the lake to the ghost town of Lucin. Here, visit Nancy Holt’s masterpiece Sun Tunnels. You’ll want to be there at sunset to see the light trans-form the concrete cylinders and feel the connection to the night sky. Stay the night back in Salt Lake City.
DAY 10 : Six hours on I-15, just before Las Vegas, you’ll be able to visit Michael Heizer’s Double Negative. In Las Vegas, there’s some art to be seen at the Shops at Crystals, a luxury mall attached to a few hotels. Get a map and find the classic Frank Stella painting, the massive Nancy Rubins sculpture, and a throwaway James Turrell moment. You may be able to visit Michael Heizer’s epic lifework, City—perhaps the biggest art piece on earth. Get back to L.A. and get some rest.
