22 Art Museums in 2023: Which One Was My Favourite?
22 Art Museums in 2023: Which One Was My Favourite?
Happy new year wishes and my 2023 recap
First and foremost, I want to wish you a very happy new year. May this year be a year of fulfilment, prosperity, good premises, rationality, a year of beautiful art, great food, and most importantly, a profound sense of purpose, self-esteem, and happiness.
Over the past year, I’ve been privileged to visit 22 art museums and galleries worldwide.
Here’s the full list:
The National Gallery of Georgia, Tbilisi, Georgia
The Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany
Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany
Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon, Portugal
Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, Portugal
Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, Belgium
Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, Mexico
Museo Soumaya, Mexico City, Mexico
Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany
Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig, Germany
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria
Albertina, Vienna, Austria
Belvedere Palace, Vienna, Austria
Kunst Museum Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark
The National Gallery, London, UK
The Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK
Tate Britain, London, UK
The Courtauld Gallery, London, UK
Which one was my favourite? It's tough to pick. In some of them, such as the Hamburger Kunsthalle, I’ve only been for less than an hour; in others, I’ve had the time to come back many times. Despite that, I will say that my favourite museums of the year were:
The Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark
Museo Soumaya, Mexico City, Mexico
Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig, Germany
Hamburg
(Hamburger Kunsthalle, March 2023)
Despite only having less than an hour in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, it’s undeniably my favourite art museum. It holds many of my favourite paintings by Caspar David Friedrich and many other great romantics. I will return there in March for the special 250th-anniversary exhibition (let me know if you want to meet there). The museum has so many other great painters that it’s really a must-visit for any art lover.
Vienna
(Kunsthistorisches Museum, September 2023)
After visiting Vienna, I realised that it’s the best city in Europe (excluding Paris, which I haven’t been to) when it comes to paintings. The Kunsthistorisches Museum is a massive celebration of Renaissance and Dutch Golden Age art. It’s spectacular. It is a must-go for anyone who comes to Vienna, and the other museums in Vienna are also great.
Copenhagen
(Statens Museum for Kunst, October 2023)
One pleasant surprise was the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, Denmark. This is another one of my rapid visits, where I only had about 90 minutes. Despite that, I really enjoyed the great Danish romantic art. Johan Christian Dahl is one of my favourite painters, and there is a lovely collection of Impressionism there, too. I like the earlier Danish and other Scandinavian art. Also, Copenhagen is one of the best cities in Europe. I must return to visit the Glyptotek, another fantastic museum in the city.
Mexico City
(Museo Soumaya, July 2023)
The Soumaya Museum is huge and has a really astounding collection of paintings from the 18th and 19th centuries; it even has some 20th-century art that I genuinely liked by Maurice de Vlaminck (not the cubist-era ones) and many other giants such as Rembrandt, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Renoir, and Courbet. There are so many great paintings. I was really amazed to find so much great art in Mexico City.
Leipzig
(Museum der Bildenden Künste, August 2023)
The Museum der Bildenden Künste in Leipzig has an extensive collection of works by Arnold Böcklin, the great Swiss symbolist painter. It contains a version of my favourite painting, “The Isle of the Dead”, which inspired one of my favourite Rachmaninoff pieces named after the painting. Like any other good German museum, it has a good collection of romantic-era paintings by Friedrich, Dahl, and other greats. One more great thing about this museum is that they put all the modern rubbish on the top floor so that you don’t even have to get a glimpse of that. Leipzig is also a really wonderful city—very walkable, clean, elegant, filled with great music, fantastic beer, and German sausages—what else does one need?
If you are looking for any further recommendations about any of the locations I’ve mentioned, please don’t hesitate to email me. I’m happy to provide my advice. Generally speaking, all the museums I mentioned on the full list are fantastic, and I don’t regret visiting any one of them.
In conclusion, 2023 has been a very artful year, and I look forward to acting towards making 2024 even more beautiful. Thank you for being a vital part of my year and helping me develop my passion for great paintings via this blog.
To life!
Yonatan