Go to an Art Museum Day Date in the current year: November 9, 2024

An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the display of visual art, although it may be used as a venue for performance arts, poetry readings, music concerts, and other artistic activities. The predecessors of modern art museums were pinacothecas — rooms for storing pictures and other works of art in ancient Greece and ancient Rome.

In medieval and early modern Europe, works of art were stored in cathedrals and large churches, as well as in royal palaces, castles, and country houses of the social elite. Parts of these collections were sometimes made accessible to the public. Many of the major art museums, such as the Louvre in Paris and the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, were based on royal collections.

The world’s first public art museum is Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland. It was established in 1661. Most of its original collection was based on the so-called Amerbach Cabinet, a private art collection purchased by the city of Basel and the University of Basel from the Amerbach family. It included works by the German painter Hans Holbein the Younger.

Public art museums began to actively emerge in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Some of them were based on royal collections that were nationalized and opened to the public as a result of the French Revolution and the ensuing Napoleonic Wars. The British Museum was established in 1753, the State Hermitage Museum in 1764, the Louvre Museum in 1793, and the Prado in 1819.

Today, there are thousands of art museums across the world. According to The Art Newspaper annual survey, the top ten most visited art museums in the world in 2019 were the Louvre Museum in Paris, the National Museum of China in Beijing, the Vatican Museums in Vatican City (Rome), the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the British Museum in London, Tate Modern in London, the National Gallery in London, the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

Go to an Art Museum Day was created by unnamed art enthusiasts to promote visual art and art galleries. The best way to celebrate it is of course to visit an art museum or exhibition. But if you can’t go to a museum, don’t get disappointed! World’s leading museums offer free online tours of some of their most popular and important exhibits.

Art museums with the largest online collections include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), the Louvre, the Palace of Versailles, the British Museum, the Tate Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery (London), the Uffizi Gallery, the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, the Van Gogh Museum, the Mauritshuis, the Rijksmuseum, the State Hermitage Museum, the Tretyakov Gallery, and more.