* Culture * Books * Art and design Putting modern art on the map

Will Gompertz's tube map-style guide to modern art movements. Photograph: Viking/Penguin

The story of modern art is in many ways the story of the 20th century. Art shaped and was shaped by events, people, ideas and innovations far beyond the narrow confines of its world. The modern skyscrapers of Manhattan, TS Eliot, Monty Python, the Sex Pistols, the iPhone and the great political, philosophical and social movements of the last hundred years all owe something to the art produced by Manet, Monet and those pioneering artists who followed in their wake.
As does Harry Beck's Tube Map (1931), which I have parodied to illustrate the interconnectivity between many of the modern art movements and their main protagonists. The map is devised to give equal weight to each movement and artist, which is about as accurate as Beck's geographical representation of London: it is a necessary case of form following function. In truth, like all stories, there are lead players, support acts and a few walk-on parts. Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Kasimir Malevich and Jackson Pollock were all, of course, disproportionately influential. As were a number of those on the money side of things, including Paul Durand-Ruel (impressionism), Peggy Guggenheim (abstract expressionism) and Leo Castelli (pop art).
But there is perhaps one person above all others whose influence and personality dominate 21st-century artistic activity and critical thinking – an individual who was able to impose his will on the world without recourse to courting the media, becoming a celebrity, or having vast amounts of money. It is an incredible story within a story that starts on 2 April 1917; on this day, the American president, Woodrow Wilson, was on his feet in Washington DC urging Congress to make a formal declaration of war on Germany – a historic and world-changing moment.
Meanwhile, in New York City, three well-dressed, youngish men had emerged from a smart duplex apartment at 33 West 67th Street and were heading out into the city. They were oblivious to Wilson's exhortations, just as they were to the fact that their afternoon stroll would also have epoch-making consequences on a global scale. Art was about to change for ever.
The three friends walked and talked and smiled, occasionally breaking into restrained laughter. For the elegant Frenchman in the middle, flanked by his two stockier American companions, such excursions were always welcome. He was an artist who had not yet lived in the city for two years: long enough to know his way around, too short a time to have become blasé about its exciting, sensuous charms. The thrill of walking southwards through Central Park and down towards Columbus Circle never failed to lift his spirits; the spectacular sight of trees morphing into buildings was, to him, one of the wonders of the world.
The trio ambled down Broadway. As they approached midtown the sun disappeared behind impenetrable blocks of concrete and glass, bringing a spring chill to the air. The two Americans talked across their friend, whose hair was swept back exposing a high forehead and well-defined hairline. As they talked he thought. As they walked he stopped. He looked into the window of a store selling household goods and raised his hands, cupping his eyes to eliminate the reflection in the glass, revealing long fingers each of which was crowned with a perfectly manicured nail.
The pause was brief. He moved away from the storefront and looked up. His friends had gone. He glanced around, shrugged, lit a cigarette and crossed the road – not to find his companions, but to seek the sun's warmth. It was now 4.50pm, and a wave of anxiety washed over the Frenchman. Soon the stores would be closed and there was something he desperately needed to buy.
He walked a little faster. Someone shouted his name. He looked up. It was Walter Arensberg, the shorter of his two friends, who had supported the Frenchman's artistic endeavours in America almost from the moment he stepped off the boat on a windy June morning in 1915. Arensberg was beckoning him to cross back over the road, past Madison Square and on to Fifth Avenue. But the notary's son from Normandy had tilted his head upwards, his attention focused on an enormous concrete wedge. The Flatiron Building had captivated the French artist long before he arrived in New York, an early calling card from a city that he would go on to make his home.
His initial encounter with the high-rise building had come when it was first built and he was still living in Paris. He had seen a photograph of the 22-floor skyscraper taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1903 and reproduced in a French magazine. Now, 14 years later, both the Flatiron and Stieglitz, an American photographer-cum-gallery owner, had become part of his new-world life.
Arensberg called again, this time with a little frustration in his voice. The other man in their party laughed. Joseph Stella was an artist too. He understood his Gallic friend's precise yet wayward mind and appreciated his helplessness when confronted by an object of interest.
United again, the three made their way south until they reached 118 Fifth Avenue, the retail premises of JL Mott Iron Works, a plumbing specialist. Inside, Arensberg and Stella chatted, while their friend ferreted around among the bathrooms and doorhandles that were on display. After a few minutes he called the store assistant over and pointed to an unexceptional, flat-backed, white porcelain urinal. A Bedfordshire, the young lad said. The Frenchman nodded, Stella raised an eyebrow, and Arensberg, with an exuberant slap on the assistant's back, said he'd buy it.
One of Duchamp's recreations of the original 1917 readymade, Fountain. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
They left the store. Arensberg and Stella called a taxi while the quiet, philosophical Frenchman remained on the sidewalk holding the heavy urinal. He was amused by the plan he had hatched for this porcelain pissotière, which he intended to use as a prank to upset the stuffy American art crowd. Looking down at its shiny white surface, Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) smiled to himself: he thought it might cause a bit of a stir.
Duchamp took the urinal back to his studio, laid it down on its back and rotated it 180 degrees. He then signed and dated it in black paint on the left-hand side of its outer rim, using the pseudonym R Mutt 1917. His work was nearly done. There was only one job remaining: he needed to give his urinal a name. He chose Fountain. What had been, just a few hours before, a nondescript, ubiquitous urinal was now, by dint of Duchamp's actions, a work of art.
At least it was in Duchamp's mind. He believed he had invented a new form of sculpture: one where an artist could select any pre-existing mass-produced object with no obvious aesthetic merit, and by freeing it from its functional purpose – in other words making it useless – and by giving it a name and changing its context, turn it into a de facto artwork. He called this new form of art a readymade: a sculpture that was already made.
His intention was to enter Fountain into the 1917 Independents Exhibition, the largest show of modern art that had ever been mounted in the US. The exhibition itself was a challenge to America's art establishment. It was organised by the Society of Independent Artists, a group of free-thinking, forward-looking intellectuals who were making a stand against what they perceived to be the National Academy of Design's conservative and stifling attitude to modern art (just as the impressionists had done in a very similar fashion over 40 years earlier).
They declared that any artist could become a member of their society for the price of $1, and that any member could enter up to two works into the 1917 Independents Exhibition as long as they paid an additional charge of $5 per artwork. Duchamp was a director of the society and a member of the exhibition's organising committee. Which, at least in part, explains why he chose a pseudonym for his mischievous entry. Then again, it was Duchamp's nature to play on words, make jokes and poke fun at the pompous art world.
The name Mutt is a play on Mott, the store from which he bought the urinal. It is also said to be a reference to the daily comic strip Mutt and Jeff, which had first been published in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1907 with just a single character, A Mutt. Mutt was entirely motivated by greed, a dim-witted spiv with a compulsion to gamble and develop ill-conceived get-rich-quick schemes. Jeff, his gullible sidekick, was an inmate of a mental asylum. Given that Duchamp probably intended Fountain to be a critique of greedy, speculative collectors, it is an interpretation that would appear plausible. As does the suggestion that the initial R stands for Richard, a French colloquialism for moneybags. With Duchamp nothing was ever simple; he was, after all, a man who preferred chess to art.
Marcel Duchamp photographed in 1968 with his work Bicycle Wheel. Photograph: Hulton Getty
Duchamp had other targets in mind when selecting a urinal as a readymade sculpture. He wanted to question the very notion of what constituted a work of art as decreed by academics and critics, whom he saw as the self-elected and largely unqualified arbiters of taste. His position was that if an artist said something was a work of art, having influenced its context and meaning, then it was a work of art, or at least demanded to be judged as such. He realised that although this was a fairly simple proposition to grasp, it would revolutionise art if accepted.
Until this point, the medium – canvas, marble, wood or stone – had dictated to an artist how he or she could go about making a work of art. The medium always came first, and only then would the artist be allowed to project his or her ideas on to it via painting, sculpting or drawing. Duchamp wanted to flip the hierarchy. He considered the medium to be secondary: first and foremost was the idea. Art could be constructed from, and mediated through, anything. That was a big idea.
The hidden meanings contained within Fountain don't end in Duchamp's wordplay and provocation. He specifically chose a urinal because as an object it has plenty to say, much of it erotic, an aspect of life that Duchamp frequently explored in his work. It doesn't, for example, take much imagination to see its sexual connotations when presented upside down. That allusion may or may not have been understood by those who sat alongside Duchamp on the organising committee; either way his co-directors were unimpressed. Fountain was rejected and banned from the 1917 Independents Exhibition. The feeling among the majority of the society's directorate (there were some, including Arensberg and Duchamp, who argued passionately in its favour) was that Mr Mutt was taking the piss.
Which of course he was. Duchamp was challenging his fellow society directors and the organisation's constitution, which he had helped to write. He was daring them to realise the idea that they had collectively set out, which was to take on the art establishment and the authoritarian voice of the conservative National Academy of Design with a new liberal, progressive set of principles. The conservatives won the battle, but as we now know, spectacularly lost the war. R Mutt's exhibit was deemed too offensive and vulgar on the grounds that it was a urinal, a subject that was not considered a suitable topic for discussion among America's puritan middle classes. Team Duchamp immediately resigned from the board. Fountain was never seen in public, or ever again. Nobody knows what happened to the Frenchman's pseudonymous work. It has been suggested that it was smashed by one of the disgusted committee, thus solving the problem of whether to show it or not. Then again, a couple of days later, at his 291 gallery, Stieglitz took a photograph of the notorious object, but that might have been a hastily remade version of the readymade. That too has disappeared.
But the great power of ideas is that you cannot uninvent them. The Stieglitz photograph was crucial. Having Fountain photographed by one of the art world's most respected practitioners, who also happened to run an influential gallery in Manhattan, was important. It was an endorsement of the work by the avant garde, and provided a photographic record: documentary proof of the object's existence. No matter how many times the naysayers smashed Duchamp's work, he could go back down to JL Mott's, buy a new one and simply copy the layout of the R Mutt signature from Stieglitz's image. And that's exactly what happened. There are 15 Duchamp-endorsed copies of Fountain to be found in collections around the world.
When one of those copies is put on display it is weird to see people taking it so seriously. You see hordes of earnest exhibition visitors craning their heads around the object, staring at it for ages, standing back, looking at it from all angles. It's a urinal! It's not even the original. The art is in the idea, not the object.
The reverence with which Fountain is now treated would have amused Duchamp, who chose it specifically for its lack of aesthetic appeal (something he called anti-retinal). The original readymade sculpture was really only ever intended as a provocative prank, but has gone on to become perhaps the single most influential artwork of the 20th century. The ideas it embodied directly influenced several major art movements, including dada, surrealism, abstract expressionism, pop art and conceptualism. Duchamp is unquestionably the most revered and referenced artist among today's contemporary artists, from Jeff Koons to Ai Weiwei.
Ai Weiwei's Forever. Photograph: Ren Zhenglai/XinHua/Xinhua Press/Corbis
In fact the Chinese artist and activist has modelled his entire output and approach to life on Duchamp's example. He, like the Frenchman, is at the centre of his own universe: fearless and determined, an artist whose own readymades are also often superficially playful but contain profound questions and statements. He too makes assisted readymades, which in Ai Weiwei's case often begin with 4,000-year-old neolithic Chinese pottery vases, ancient and revered objects which he then decorates in gaudy modern colours, or sometimes with the Coca-Cola logo.
On one occasion he thought it would be amusing to take a series of photographs of himself dropping one of these vases on to a concrete floor – to record the moment when it smashed. He duly did this and thought nothing more of it until an exhibition of his work was being assembled at an art gallery. The curator contacted him to say that they didn't have quite enough for the show and to ask if he had anything else. The artist had a rummage in his studio and came up with the photographs of the dropping of the vase. The images were then hung in the gallery under the title Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995) and duly became a famous artwork. Which proved Ai Weiwei correct in his belief that his every action is part of his art, while also echoing an example of Duchamp retro-fitting, when he proclaimed that his bicycle wheel attached to the top of a stool was an assisted readymade, even though at the time he made it only as an amusement for himself.
It is Duchamp who is to blame for the whole "is it art?" debate – which was, of course, what he intended. It is because of Duchamp that Tracey Emin's unmade bed (My Bed, 1998) is a work of art and yours is not. But that is not to say that Emin's or any other artist's conceptually based work is necessarily worthy of our attention – each piece should be judged on its merits, as the American artist Sol LeWitt pointed out.
He wrote in an essay in 1967 that conceptual art is only good if the idea is good. And that you can decide for yourself.

Art, inspiration and an empty canvas

Western star ... the ubiquitous ute, favoured transport in Broken Hill. Elissa Blake takes an art-lover's tour of Broken Hill, with larger-than-life characters and even larger landscapes.
Rusted iron. Rich olive. Cappuccino. Dirty gold. An array of warm purples and greys. The colours emerging from the rocky outcrops just outside Broken Hill have been inspiring painters for decades. Asthe sky turns rosy pink in the Living Desert Reserve, over 12 massive sculptures carved from 52 tonnes of Wilcannia sandstone, I can see why this semi-arid city on the edge of the outback is a magnet for painters and art lovers.
Many of those artists, some of them former miners or their descendants, were inspired to pick up paintbrushes by the example of Pro Hart, the ebullient miner-turned-art celebrity whose irreverent images of gamblers, drunks and local characters are famous around the world. Like Hart, who died in 2006, most of these artists are self-taught and welcome visitors to their own galleries - often the front room of their homes.
The Broken Earth complex. The locals say there is a sense of "spirit" in this country. In the silence, the vastness of the landscape and the sky certainly put you in your place. "I see the landscape as almost prehistoric," Ian Howarth says as he scans the 360-degree view of the scrubby plains bordered in the distance by the Barrier and Flinders ranges. "It's so weathered and worn. It carries the weight of aeons of time. It's almost the land that time forgot."
Howarth is the gallery assistant at the Regional Art Gallery, established in 1904. He is driving me about town in his ute. Every second car is a four-wheel-drive in Broken Hill, he says, laughing. "The rest are utes. No one walks anywhere. It's either too hot, too cold or too windy."
The main street is incredibly quiet and pedestrians are few - maybe everyone is in their car. But those residents I do meet are lively, generous with their time and quick to laugh. About 18,000 people live here, an ageing population with pockets of young families and transient workers. Everyone I meet feels a deep connection to the history of the city.

The Mineral Art and Mining Museum. "It used to be a pretty rough town with boxing and wrestling every Saturday night," says artist Jack Absalom, 84, one of the grandfathers of the art scene. "All disputes were settled on a Sunday morning with fisticuffs. Now it's all calmed down." He remains as feist as ever, telling me Sydney would be nothing but a fishing village without the wealth extracted from the mines in Broken Hill. "Sydney people are parasites on the community."
Absalom's gallery is a headline attraction on the Broken Hill art tourist trail. He is the only surviving member of the Brushmen of the Bush still resident in the town. The five Brushmen - Hart, Absalom, Hugh Schultz, Eric Minchin and John Pickup - painted landscapes in the Broken Hill area and gained fame in the art world in the 1970s, exhibiting across Australian and in London, Rome, New York and Los Angeles.The only other surviving member is Pickup, who now lives in Queensland. Absalom shows me an impressive range of minerals and opals in his gallery and tells me how he chose to paint on "huge canvases" to capture the isolation and the dry, brick-red beauty of the earth.
"Of course, now it's all bloody green," he says. "We've had the first big rains since 1973 and the whole place is green."
Green isn't the word I would have chosen to describe the vegetation masking the famous red dirt. But it's certainly on everyone's mind. In August last year, the city lost its chance to feature in George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road, the fourth instalment in the Mad Max series. Despite years of preparation for the shoot, the landscape was deemed insufficiently post-apocalyptic after heavy rain resulted in wildflowers blooming in the desert. The Namibian desert was chosen for the shoot instead.
It was a heavy blow to an area whose film-production CV includes Mad Max 2, Wake in Fright, Razorback, A Town Like Alice, DirtyDeeds and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Broken Hill's cavernous central power station, built in 1931 and operated until 1986, has been converted into a film studio - the city is trying to attract more productions.
I head over to Pro Hart's gallery, the most popular art attraction in Broken Hill, to meet his widow, 73-year-old Raylee Hart, and his son, John, also a painter. She tells me Hart put Broken Hill on the map and opened visitor's eyes to the history of the mines, which dates to the discovery of silver ore in 1883.
"There is a lot of living history here," she says. "The mines are still here and the little miners' cottages made out of corrugatediron are all still here. Everyone is restoring their awnings and verandahs in heritage colours. It's not just an artist's paradise; there is so much history here that we're proud of."
Charles Sturt was the first European explorer to pass within sight of the "broken hill" in 1844, a rocky ridge jutting above the plains, an outcrop of what was then the richest deposit of lead, silver and zinc in the world. But it would be another 40 years before boundary rider Charles Rasp pegged the first mineral lease in the area, attracting thousands of miners from the declining copper towns in South Australia, as well as the Victorian goldfields.
Broken Hill, often called the Silver City, has enjoyed (and endured) 127 years of continuous mining activity. Its people have witnessed the birth of the trade union movement, several momentous strikes (one in 1919 lasted 18 months) and many booms and busts.
Rae Dellar tells me all about it. She is 66 and works at the Broken Hill Visitor Information Centre, and there isn't much she doesn't know about the town and its people. During a two-hour walking tour of the town with Dellar, I learn about the history of the mines and the railway line, the town's myriad architectural styles and its pride in the union movement. She points out the rambling Sturt's desert peas in bloom by the railway station and the crystals and minerals in the city's three mineral museums. Most of the streets in town are named after minerals or chemical compounds: Crystal, Mercury, Bromide, Sulphide, Oxide.
The most remarkable feature of town is the enormous Line of Lode (affectionately known as the slag heap), a mountain of residue from silver-ore smelting that divides the town through its centre. At its top sits a cafe-restaurant, the Broken Earth, with panoramic views. From here you can see that Broken Hill is an oasis, a thriving metropolis in the middle of seemingly endless flat terrain sprinkled with saltbushes and mulga trees.
Just outside is a stark memorial to the workers who died in the city's mines since the late 19th century - more than 700 people. Each miner is listed with his name, age and cause of death: asphyxiation from dynamite fumes, premature explosion, dust on the lungs, lead poisoning, rockfalls. Underground safety improved over time but deaths were not uncommon. One miner is listed as being crushed by an ore truck. Another died by being caught in belting. One man was killed in a remote-controlled loader accident. It is a stark reminder that mineral wealth does not come cheap. The youngest miner is listed as only 12 years old. "He might have been younger," Dellar says. "Boys often lied about their age."
She knows all the town's plaques and memorials. There's one to remember opera star June Bronhill, the local girl who changed her name from Gough to Bronhill (a contraction of Broken Hill) in gratitude to those who raised money to send her to London to train. Another pays respect to Vivian Bullwinkel, a sister at the Broken Hill hospital and the only survivor of the Banka Island massacre, in which 21 Australian nurses were shot by Japanese soldiers in 1942.
We finish our tour at the Palace Hotel, where scenes fromPriscilla, Queen of the Desert were filmed. A family is on the verandah playing a board game. Inside, the bar is a mix of period furniture and low lights. More than a pub, the Palace is a living museum that pays tribute to Broken Hill's history, characters and the city's future as an oasis of artistic endeavour.
Opposite the hotel is Broken Hill's World War I memorial, where a statue of an Australian soldier in battle-worn uniform is about to hurl a Mills bomb. Dellar smiles. "There's a saying that in a mining town, never blow up a hotel."

Portland Art Museum names its first full-time curator for European art

courtesy of the Portland Art MuseumDawson Carr sees enough opportunity for the Portland Art Museum's European collection that he's leaving the National Gallery in London to take on a curating post at PAM.

The Portland Art Museum has appointed a full-time curator of European art for the first time in its history, selecting Dawson W. Carr to take responsibility for all European painting, sculpture, and drawings from the period up to 1850.
       
Chief curator Bruce Guenther, in a museum press release, called Carr “an internationally known scholar from a prestigious institution” who “has a sterling reputation in the field with a distinguished record of exhibitions and publications.”

Carr, 60, indeed comes with impressive credentials. He’s currently the curator of Spanish and later Italian paintings and head of display at The National Gallery in London, where he’s worked since 2003. He’s spent more than a decade as associate curator of paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and served in various roles at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He holds masters and doctorate degrees from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts.

A native of Miami, Carr initially studied theatrical design as an undergraduate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “But I took art history to support that work, and I got hooked,” he said by phone from London on Thursday. He developed expertise especially in Spanish and Italian art of the 16th--18th centuries.

In January, Carr will become the Janet and Richard Geary Curator of European Art, a position that was endowed in 2008, but only now is being filled. According to Beth Heinrich, director of public relations, the $2 million endowment was pledged over five years. “Our policy is that until an endowment has been fully funded, we’re not going to spend the money.”
       
The endowment was part of what persuaded Carr to come to a much smaller museum than those where he’s spent the bulk of his career.
       
“When an institution steps up to the plate and has an endowed position in European art, at this point in time, people sit up and take notice,” he said.
       
“The London experience is an extraordinary one. As an American, I never dreamed I’d get to work with the caliber of items that I have here...But the National Gallery was great a century before I was born and will be great after I’m dust. Portland is a place where I can make the most significant contribution, and that’s the real attraction.”

Carr also expressed excitement about Portland’s widely celebrated quality of life, its proximity to wilderness, and a rare small-city sophistication that he said reminds him of Glasgow (“There’s a liveliness about it. It values the weird, and being a bit anarchic.”)

But what he called his “adventure” will be developing and showcasing a small but promising European collection.
       
“The collection there has some distinctions. It has very good paintings and objects from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation -- it’s one of the institutions that made out really well on the Kress Collection dispersal. And there’s a core of Italian and Netherlandish things that are very fine.

“The kinds of works of art that are going to make a significant difference to that collection are not going to come cheap -- although sometimes you can get lucky. What you want are things with real wall power, that keep people coming back again.”

Between a need for “wall power” and a plan to provide “smaller, more focused shows that will give context to the finer pieces,” Carr promised an accessible balance for the public.
      
 “It all has to be balanced and fit together,” he said. “The reason people like me get doctorates and then work in museums instead of in academia is we’re interested in this much bigger, broader audience. It won’t get academic with me. I’m too interested in engaging people.”

Top 10 art and architecture destinations

View of the glass pyramid, designed by Chinese-born U.S. Architect I.M. Pei, which is the entrance of the Louvre Museum in Paris. Credit: Reuters/Regis Duvignau

From Picasso in St. Petersburg to sculptures in Sydney, Hotwire.com has compiled a list of the top 10 places to admire famous art around the world. Reuters has not endorsed this list. 1. Paris, France It may seem obvious, but there's a reason why Paris always ends up on top of most art-lovers' lists. Start with one of the largest and most well-known museums in the world, the Louvre (Musee du Louvre). This museum displays an estimated 380,000 objects and 35,000 works of art including Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. And of course, the Louvre Palace (Palais du Louvre) is one of the most famous architectural works of art in its own right. Beyond the Louvre, visitors can experience impressionist and post-impressionist French art at the Musee d'Orsay, the surrealist movement at Espace Dali or view modern works by artists like Pablo Picasso at the Musee d'Art Moderne.

2. Florence, Italy
Known as the "cradle of the Renaissance," Florence is overflowing with beautiful pieces of art and architecture. Before even setting foot inside a museum, visitors can take a tour of Firenze to bask in all of the great architecture that makes up the city. From palaces to monuments to religious buildings, the city itself is a giant museum of master architectural work that is sure to leave folks breathless. Once inside these beautiful buildings, be sure to visit Galleria dell' Accademia (Academy Gallery), which is home to Michelangelo's David, or the Galleria degli Uffizi (Uffizi Galleries), to view works from artists such as Giotto, Botticelli, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci.
3. Vatican City
St. Peter's Square is an architectural masterpiece designed by Gian Bernini in the seventeenth century, but it's the Vatican museums and churches that are the stars. These museums hold an immense collection of sculptures, paintings and artefacts that have been collected by the Roman Catholic Church for centuries. This includes some of history's most renowned works of art, such as Michelangelo's painted ceiling at the Sistine Chapel and the Last Judgment. Famous works by Raphael can also be found throughout the Vatican but are mostly concentrated in the Apostolic Palace. And don't forget, just outside the Vatican walls sits Rome, which could stand alone as an art lover's delight with its museums and Roman architecture.
4. Berlin, Germany
Over the last 20 years, Berlin has emerged as one of the biggest art venues in Europe with an impressive selection of new architecture, exhibits and art galleries. But even with its new art scene, Berlin will always have strong ties to the past, which can be seen at one of the 17 Berlin State Museums that are divided into five clusters. Museumsinsel (Museum Island), a complex of five museums, is the largest in Europe, and is comprised of the Altes Museum, Neues Museum, Alte Nationalgalerie, Bode Museum, and Pergamon Museum, which were all built on the site of the original city settlement. The museums' collections range from Roman and Greek Classical Antiquities, to 19th century sculptures and paintings, to prehistory and early history.
5. Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Amsterdam is a great destination to experience the out-of-the-ordinary, and the art is no exception. If you are craving something a little unusual, The Florescent Art Museum, also known as "Electric Ladyland," is a tribute to Jimi Hendrix and has a vast collection of psychedelic pieces. But the Dutch also have a wealth of classics, and gave the world such famous painters as Rembrandt and Van Gogh. The Van Gogh Museum displays the most extensive collection of his work including 200 paintings, 550 sketches and hundreds of letters from Van Gogh to his brother Theo.
6. St. Petersburg, Russia
St. Petersburg is arguably one of the most picturesque cities in the world, and at its center is the State Hermitage Museum. This museum contains three million pieces, including works by Leonardo Da Vinci, Pablo Picasso and Nicolas Poussin. It is also one of the most extensive museums with objects from around the world, ranging in time from pre-historic to post-modern. St. Petersburg also has a wealth of museums dedicated to Russian art, with the State Russian Museums housing the largest collection of pieces from Russia. For something out-of-the-box, be sure to stop by the Museum of Non-Conformist Art, which features the art movement under the Soviet Union.
7. Santa Fe, New Mexico
The community of Santa Fe has long been considered both a haven for creativity and an important gathering place for the American art community, especially those who love Native art. In August, the annual Santa Fe Indian Market attracts thousands of visitors to the city for the largest showing of authentic Native art in the world. Other art enthusiasts with eclectic tastes can venture to the art district on Canyon Road, which features more than 100 art galleries and studios. Finally, Santa Fe was home to many well-known artists including Georgia O'Keeffe. O'Keeffe became famous for her depictions of enlarged flowers and paintings inspired by her time in New Mexico, which are on exhibition at The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.
8. Los Angeles, California
As one of the most eclectic cities in the United States, Los Angeles is a giant melting pot of art that is just waiting to be explored, with a lot of it on the cutting edge of modernity. Visit Chris Burden's iconic Urban Light display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in West Hollywood, or travel downtown to the Museum of Contemporary Art MOCA.L, where artists such as Banksy and Tim Burton have shown their work. LA is home to not only one, but two Getty Museums. Whether travellers feel like exploring the beautiful gardens at the Getty Villa, or admiring the collections of European and American art at the Getty Center, both venues provide breathtaking views of the City of Angels.
9. Sydney, Australia
Even though Sydney is more known for its beautiful beaches, it still offers travellers a unique artistic experience. Visitors can explore the city to see the architecture, local galleries and the Sydney Sculpture Walk, which features Australian and contemporary artists. In March, Sydney celebrates its vibrant art scene with a month-long festival. During Art Month, visitors can not only expect an abundance of art exhibits, but can experience art talks, tours, performances, art bars and gallery openings. Or for a more intimate look into Sydney's local art, Sydney Art Tours lead people through the smaller galleries and provide an up-close look into artists' studios. Travellers can also head over to Balmain, the suburb of Sydney where artists, writers, musicians and filmmakers are known to hang-out. And don't leave Sydney without touring its most famous piece of architecture, The Sydney Opera House.
10. Tokyo, Japan
Tokyo offers art enthusiasts a chance to experience amazing Asian styles that were created independently of the West. The city is home to more than 240 museums, such as the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum and the Nerima Art Museum, plus an array of magnificent temples and shrines. For the arts and crafts lover, visit Tokyo's arts and crafts scene at the Edo Shitamachi Traditional Museum, and for someone with an ear for music, stop by the Musashino Music College Musical Instrument Museum, which has more than 5,000 instruments from all over the world.