17 Best Museums in Boston
People from all across the globe come to Boston to get really smart, or wicked smaht, as the local lingo would have it. With one of the largest concentrations of colleges and universities in the world, and the academicians that populate them, the city impresses with its institutions of higher learning—and the stand-out museums of art, natural history, science, and much more, that go with it. The city’s central place in the early days of the United States means it also brims with historic sites and houses turned into museums. And there’s plenty of fun and games to be found in Boston’s best museums, too, from a three-story indoor climbing structure kids can’t resist, to indoor lightning shows, to hands-on art-making and engineering.
Read our complete Boston travel guide here.
This gallery has been updated with new information since its original publish date.
Liza VollactivityIsabella Stewart Gardner Museum
$This is one of our favorite museums in Boston—and the country. At once intimate and unparalleled in its grandeur, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum draws on the vast art collection of its eponymous (and eccentric) founder, who had a thirst for travel, a bohemian lifestyle, and the finest of luxuries. Set within a Venetian-style palazzo, surrounding an elegant courtyard, masterpieces by the likes of Botticelli, Raphael, Titian, and John Singer Sargent share space with impressive architectural elements. Gardner herself carefully curated the collection of more than 17,000 objects, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, textiles, metalworks, ceramics, books, manuscripts, and archival material, all collected during her lifetime. A Renzo Piano–designed wing, which opened in 2012, houses a cafe and gift shop and provides interdisciplinary, multipurpose space for contemporary artists, musicians, and scholars to work and share their creations.
GettyactivityUSS Constitution
USS Constitution, the world’s oldest-commissioned warship still afloat, is berthed on a dock at Charlestown’s Navy Yard, where it’s part of the Freedom Trail and open to the public with free admission. Step onto the 225-plus-year-old wooden ship, and you’ll learn about life in the Navy from active-duty sailors. Be sure to glance upward for a sense of the scale of this seasoned vessel and its soaring masts, then take narrow steps down to the lower decks and peek into the captain’s quarters. Across the pier from the ship, the privately owned USS Constitution Museum (which has suggested admission fees) offers added insights, so you can understand the significance of “Old Ironsides” and life on the high seas.
GettyactivityHarvard Museum of Natural History
This museum proves fascinating for adults and science-minded kids alike. Since 1998, it has served as the public-facing side of Harvard’s botanical, geological, and zoology research. Some of the collections here began as early as the 1780s. Highlights to hit would be the glass flowers (probably the most interesting thing in the museum’s collection), the dinosaur hall (don’t miss the world’s only mounted Kronosaurus and one of the first Triceratops skulls ever discovered), the gem gallery (check out the 1,600-pound Brazilian amethyst geode), and the great mammal hall (look up to see the five whale skeletons suspended from the ceiling). It's also a two birds one stone situation as admission here also grants access to the adjacent Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology.
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Caitlin CunninghamactivityInstitute of Contemporary Art, Boston (ICA Boston)
The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (known as the ICA), built its permanent home in 2006 on the edge of the harbor in the Seaport District. Diller Scofidio + Renfro designed the contemporary building to mirror the industrial cranes that load container ships nearby. Inside, you’ll find provocative contemporary art and a dedication to stellar programming. ICA’s collection is anchored by remarkable work by twentieth- and twenty-first-century women, including Louise Bourgeois, Doris Salcedo, and Eva Hesse, all donated by philanthropist and activist Barbara Lee. In summer 2018, the museum inaugurated the ICA Watershed, a seasonal satellite space for large-scale work that’s open Memorial to Labor Day. Located in a former factory in East Boston, it’s reached by a free shuttle included in the price of admission. (Be sure to book it ahead.)
Courtesy JFK Library, BostonactivityJohn F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
The Kennedy family is synonymous with the legacy of Boston, and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum inspires visitors to deepen their understanding of one of the city’s most famous sons. Guided by Jacqueline B. Kennedy following JFK's assassination, the vision of the library evolved into a modern monument and memorial to the 35th president. Architect I. M. Pei designed the dramatic, white concrete and darkly tinted glass building, which holds curated galleries that move through Kennedy’s formative years to his time in the White House. The exhibitions capture the eloquence of his speeches with audio and video recordings, providing a moving tribute to an inspiring figure.
Boston Globe/GettyactivityMuseum of African American History (MAAH)
The small but mighty Museum of African American History focuses on the life and work of the African American community who lived on the north slope of Beacon Hill in the nineteenth century and propelled the abolitionist and civil rights movements forward. At the end of a quiet street, the museum spans two historic brick buildings, both with significant legacies in the neighborhood. The first, the African Meeting House, is the oldest black church still standing today, which served as the “Black Faneuil Hall” and later, an important hub of the abolitionist movement. Next door, the Abiel Smith School was the nation’s oldest public school for African American children and eventually a headquarters for black Civil War veterans. The Abiel Smith School holds one rotating exhibition on its upper floors.
Courtesy Boston Children's MuseumactivityBoston Children's Museum
Housed in a former warehouse along the Fort Point channel, Boston Children’s Museum has three floors of experiential learning areas for kids and kids at heart. It's one of the biggest children’s museums in the world, with the permanent collection to prove it: Its holdings include some 25,000 items that range from ancient artifacts to natural history specimens, historic objects, and rare dolls. Most of the exhibits favor immersive, hands-on learning—don’t be surprised when you walk into a bubble-making room, the “Dinos in Space” area featuring two favorite kid subjects, or the “You, Me, We!” exhibit, which encourages families to connect with each other around questions of fairness in the world. Be sure to check out Martin’s Park, a public playground behind the museum that opened in June 2019, and the second-floor PlaySpace for the youngest kids (0-3), which reopened in February 2020 after a complete redo. (General admission tickets must be booked in advance for the three-hour morning or afternoon time slots; one-hours slots within your ticketed time can then be booked specifically for the PlaySpace.)
Mel Taing/MassArt Art MuseumactivityMassArt Art Museum
Boston’s only free contemporary art museum, MAAM reopened in an overhauled two-story space in February 2020, after a $12.5 million redo. A bit like a much smaller version of the InstItute of Contemporary Art across town, it shows temporary exhibitions of of-the-moment pieces, both large and small and in a variety of media. Two white-walled gallery spaces exhibit a few shows a year, with one up in each at a time. (The second-floor’s soaring, naturally lit space especially wows when curators devote it entirely to a site-specific installation by a single artist.) A small lobby, front plaza, and art-studio-style maker space provide more room for creativity. Part of the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (aka MassArt)—the first publicly funded art school in the country—the institution takes seriously its role as a teaching museum and is staffed largely by paid students.
GettyactivityMuseum of Science
The Museum of Science spans the length of the Charles River, connecting up-and-coming East Cambridge to Boston’s West End. Once known as the Charles River Dam Bridge, Science Park is home to one of the world’s largest science museums, which manages to stand out even in a city known for its heavy-hitting contributions in the discipline. The scale of the museum’s mid-century building is apparent from other parts of the city, and it becomes even clearer when you arrive at the lobby. With 700 exhibits, this is a place to get lost. Ideally, you could spend a half-day or more soaking up fascinating finds in every corner of this sprawling institution, but make sure to make time for one of the three daily "Lightning!" shows, which facilitates natural lightning with 5,000,000 volts of electricity.
Museum of Fine Arts, BostonactivityMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston
The MFA’s vast collection of art and artifacts is exceptional by any standard. The museum houses one of the best collections of Korean and Japanese art in the country, the only permanent exhibition space for ancient coins in the United States, one of the world’s largest holdings of ancient Egyptian treasures, and a broad, comprehensive collection of work by John Singer Sargent. The museum’s claims to fame are so varied, in fact, you could spend weeks documenting its exceptionality. Whatever you take in during your visit, don’t miss the Claude Monet gallery in the European Wing, reinstalled in 2016 with one of the greatest caches of the Impressionist’s work outside of France, or the impressive Arts of Islamic Cultures Gallery, whose summer 2019 reinstallation was developed in collaboration with local Muslim groups. All said and done, the MFA is the crown jewel of Boston's art scene.
activityBoston Tea Party Ships & Museum
This highly immersive museum brings history to life—quite literally—as actors in period costumes perform historic reenactments of one of the most iconic events of revolutionary New England, and they get you in on the act, too. Start at a meeting of the Body of the People, where Samuel Adams protests the tax on tea, then board a docked reproduction eighteenth-century sailing vessels to dump some tea chests into the harbor. Learn more about the lead up to the American Revolution by viewing the final engaging exhibits, which feature holographs, animated portraits, and a dramatic short film about the Battles of Lexington and Concord. It's like Disney World meets the Revolutionary War.
Sarah Bastille/Boston AthenaeumactivityBoston Athenaeum
Part museum, part library, and part members club, the Boston Athenaeum has welcomed bibliophiles, art lovers, and other intellectually curious types since 1805. (A drafter of the Massachusetts constitution and President John Adams’s secretary were among its founders, and members since have included Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.) Today, its landmarked 1849 neoclassical headquarters in Beacon Hill—which unveiled a $17 million, historically sensitive restoration, renovation, and expansion in fall 2022—brims with more than 500,000 circulating volumes plus a 100,000-piece strong special collection of maps, manuscripts, and ephemera, and another 100,000 works of art, including paintings by John Singer Sargent, Gilbert Stuart, and Allan Rohan Crite, a twentieth-century chronicler of the Black experience in Boston. While only Athenaeum members can take books out, anyone can visit: walk in and buy a ticket to view the main-level galleries, reading rooms, and Children’s Library; book ahead for a guided tour to see all five-plus floors, the stacks, and old-fashioned card catalog; or purchase a pass to enjoy practically free reign for a full day. A new cafe, Folio, is expected to open in 2024.
Courtesy Nichols House MuseumactivityNichols House Museum
Take a trip back in time on a historian-led guided tour of this early-nineteenth-century home at the top of the tony Beacon Hill neighborhood. Designed in 1804 by architect Charles Bulfinch—who also did the Massachusetts Statehouse just down the street—the Federalist-style four-story brick pile became home in 1885 to Dr. Arthur Nichols, his wife, Elizabeth, and their three daughters, Rose, Marian, and Margaret. The family went on to decorate the house with fashionable Aesthetic Movement, Arts & Crafts, and Colonial Revival pieces collected from within New England and on their travels to Europe. A feminist, suffragist, pacifist, and a renowned garden designer, Rose inherited the place in the 1920s, after her parents died, and her salons became famous for their deep discussions about the hot topics of the day. She specified in her will that the house would become a museum, and visitors today will find it nearly exactly as she left it, filled with the furniture, accessories, art, books, and ephemera gathered by the family, and especially by her, over the decades. It serves as a fascinating portrait of an iconoclastic woman.
GettyactivityHarvard Art Museums
When you walk into the renowned Harvard Art Museums—which became admission free in June 2023—you’re technically stepping into three museums at once: The Fogg Museum showcases Western art from the Middle Ages to the present day; the Busch-Reisinger Museum focuses on all modes and periods of art from northern and central Europe, with an emphasis on German-speaking countries; and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum features a collection of Asian, Islamic, and later Indian art. Once housed separately, the museums now peacefully coexist in the Fogg Museum building, which made its expanded and modernized debut in 2014, redesigned by Renzo Piano. Behind the beautiful brick facade, dating to 1927, the museums enclose a historic courtyard, now topped by a Piano-conceived pyramidal glass ceiling. The Italian architect’s impressive work for the institution re-endows it with a sense of the breadth and depth of the university’s footprint in the art world.
Courtesy MIT MuseumactivityMIT Museum
Nerdy in the best way possible, this museum devoted to STEAM—science, technology, engineering, art, and math, i.e., MIT’s bread and butter—lets you geek out with a whole bunch of hands-on, interactive exhibits that seek to make the theoretical practical and the highly conceptual understandable. In the fall of 2022, the fifty-year-old institution moved into a brand-new, purpose-built space in the heart of the university’s Kendall Square campus in Cambridge, just across the Charles River from Boston proper. It now tempts visitors with a whopping 56,000 square feet of super-engaging, beautifully designed space over three floors, its galleries displaying permanent and temporary exhibitions on subjects ranging from AI to kinetic sculpture, Moon landings to Minecraft, solar-powered cars to architecture, and genetic engineering to photography. There’s also a mostly kid-facing maker space on hand, with activities and constructions facilitated by museum educators, plus a monthly series of “After Dark” evening events for the twenty-one-and-over crowd.
The Paul Revere HouseactivityThe Paul Revere House
One of the more fascinating stops along the Freedom Trail—Boston’s self-guided walking tour of sites related to the time of the Revolutionary War—this intimate, two-story wood-frame seventeeth-century home has been restored and refurnished to reflect the way it would have looked during its initial ownership by wealthy merchant Robert Howard and then when silversmith Paul Revere (he of "Paul Revere's Ride" fame) and his family lived here in the late eighteenth century.
Justin H. Goodstein-Aue/Otis House/Courtesy of Historic New EnglandactivityOtis House
The rare Federal-era building in the city to still have its original interiors almost entirely intact, Otis House owes its impressive neoclassical style to Charles Bulfinch—the turn-of-the-nineteenth-century Boston starchitect behind many of the grandest homes of Beacon Hill and the Massachusetts State House, too. Over the century-plus that it has been a museum, curators and conservators have filled its remarkably well-preserved interiors with a carefully curated collection of Boston-made eighteenth and nineteenth-century furniture, plus period-perfect reproduction wallpapers, carpets, paint colors, and more. On tours offered Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from June through October, you’ll travel back in time to the world, and social whirl, of lawyer, politician, and real estate developer Harrison Gray Otis, and his wife, consummate hostess and mother of nine little Otises, Sally Foster Otis, who together commissioned Bulfinch to build the house in the mid-1790s. A must for early United States history lovers and classical American architecture junkees.
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