I love museums, but I must admit, I haven’t spent much time at those near to me. But get me on a tour of one, or any other historical site and, boy, do I ask questions. Naturally I’d be intrigued by the idea of a museum-sponsored trip, and I have found a couple here that make my pet travel bug woozy with delight.
This month’s tour hosts are all great art institutions that offer some of the best-looking trips I’ve ever reviewed. Whether you spend a day or two at a local destination, or make a grand trip to the world’s artistic and cultural wonders, what better way to explore and learn than on a museum-sponsored trip?
Smithsonian Study Tours offers the most complete listing of museum-led trips available. More than 250 destinations are represented, from the waterways of the U.S. to China’s Yangtze River, from the Mediterranean coast by boat or land to Russia and Costa Rica. Special focused trips cater to families, while intensive seminar trips focus on the intellectually curious. “Essence” trips focus on the specifics of a destination; for example, “Essence of Bermuda: An Invitation to Homes and Gardens,” and “Essence of Scotland: Castles, Lochs and Glens” and “Essence of Bruges: Belgium's Renaissance Masterpiece.” Go here to Pick of the Month to get a lot more information about the great offerings from our nation’s primary museum complex.
Across the water is the U.K.’s version of museum travel extraordinaire. The British Museum Traveller offers curator-led trips to areas representing the collections and special exhibitions of the museum, such as the current “Yemen – Sheba’s Realm,” as well as the curators’ areas of interest. The museum has a great selection of “Discover” tours, similar to the aforementioned Essence tours, such as “Discover Crete & Santorini” and “Discover Armenia,” and off-beat Christmas trips. Imagine “Christmas in Malta,” “Christmas in Petra” or “Christmas in Libya.” Remember, the English as travelers are a lot more adventurous than Americans, so if you’re looking to travel way off the packaged tourist routes, consider one of these fantastic trips.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art offers a small selection of travel programs both on land and sea, most with a focus on art and archeology. The museum’s general website is a fantastic tool with lots of great information; unfortunately there is not much available on their travel programs. Listing only very brief descriptions on the upcoming trips, the prices appear quite high with no explanation of what is included. For any real information, you need to contact the travel department directly.
On a much smaller scale, we have Santa Barbara Museum of Art whose focus is architecture, gardens and art in the broader cultural context, for example, “Southern Spain and Morocco – Coexistence of Cultures and Faiths: Christianity, Islam and Judaism in the Maghreb and Andalus,” “Indochina: Burma, Laos and Vietnam,” “The Glory of Byzantium: From Venice to Istanbul,” and a number of “Private Collection” trips. The museum itself has a great array of classical Greek and Roman sculptures, is very strong in Asian art and has a large works-on-paper specialization.
Two of this month’s articles cover European private homes and art collections that became museums after the owner’s death, Jacquemart-Andre in Paris and Kroller-Muller Museum in The Netherlands. To give equal time to our U.S. legacy of private collections that offer the occasional tour, the following are two late 19th-century residences that are now museums:
Hillwood Museum and Gardens near Washington, DC, is celebrating its 25th year as a public museum. Housing the most outstanding collection of Russian Imperial art outside of Russia, the Hillwood’s collection was acquired by its founder Marjorie Merriweather Post, while her husband was posted in the Soviet Union, on the eve of WWII. In celebration of the 300th anniversary of the founding of St. Petersburg, home of the Hermitage Museum, Hillwood will be having a year-long special exhibition, celebrating its founding and offering a trip to that great city.
Our other house museum had a far different beginning. The Florence Griswold Museum was the center of Connecticut’s Old Lyme Artist’s Colony. Miss Florence, as she was known, invited artists into her home and became a boarding house for the American Impressionists of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Today the house is much as it was when the colony thrived; painted door and wall panels recall the creative living space and the works of art capture the landscape as it was viewed by the Impressionists of Old Lyme. Upcoming trips include: “Colonial Williamsburg: Before America Was America,” and "Boscobel House" in New York. The museum, always a great destination, has just opened a new gallery, so now there is even more reasons to visit the home of American Impressionism.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of small and large museums across America, some in your own area. Sometimes the things you never notice, right under your nose, hide marvelous treasures. Culture is local; check out yours!
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