Modern Art Galleries and Museums

Contemporary art galleries are often open to the general public without any charge. Curators often create group shows around a particular theme. Galleries sometimes choose to represent exclusive artists, giving them opportunities for regular shows.

In the middle and late twentieth century art museums began to be built in modern styles, including the Centre Pompidou-Metz by Shigeru Ban, and the redesign of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art by Mario Botta.

Modern art galleries and museums work hard to be accessible to everyone, being both educational and inspirational and by doing so, shifting the belief that people's artistic preferences tie in with their social position.

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York

The MoMA collection offers an overview of modern and contemporary art, including works of architecture and design, drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, prints, film and electronic media. The museum offers thought-provoking modern and contemporary art and are currently in the process of expanding gallery space by 30 percent to be an experimental museum of modern and contemporary art in New York to include a state-of-the art studio and performance centre which will support a broad range of experimental programming. Famous works include Van Gogh’s The Starry Night to Yayoi Kusama’s Accumulation No.

Tate Modern, London

A separate gallery to The Tate, this gallery celebrates international modern and contemporary art, which includes nearly 70,000 artworks in a former Bankside Power Station in London, which opened in 2000. Holding the nation’s collection of modern art from 1900 to the present day, Tate Modern is one of the UK’s top three tourist attractions, not just for the art it houses, but also for the architecture of the building itself. The collection includes Picasso’s “The Three Dancers”, Dali’s “Autumnal Canibbalism”, Rothko’s “The Seagram Murals”, Duschamp’s “Fountain” and Parreno’s “Anywhen”

National Museum of Modern Art (MNAM), Centre George Pompidou, Paris

The National Museum of Modern Art (MNAM) at Centre Georges Pompidou houses more than 100,000 works from 6,400 key twentieth-century painters, sculptors, and architects including Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Miro, Magritte, Warhol, Saint-Phalle, Pollock. It has the second largest collection of modern and contemporary art in the world, after the Museum of Modern Art in New York. First opened in 1977, Paris' Centre Georges Pompidou thrives as a space where art and culture are fully accessible and open to the general public.

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles

Founded in 1979 by artists in Los Angeles and opened in the autumn of 1983, MOCA houses about 7000 contemporary art objects, and has a history of ground-breaking, historically-significant exhibitions of art created after 1940, in all media. MOCA has three locations in Los Angeles, the original and main site being MOCA Grand Avenue. There is also The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, and MOCA Pacific Design Centre. MOCA has been known for thematic-survey exhibitions about postwar art, first major museum retrospectives as well as monographic shows.

National Gallery of Art, Washington

The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden preserves, collects and exhibits works of art from numerous countries and historical eras from its collection of about 141,000 paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures and forms of new media that stretch all the way back to the Middle Ages. The National Gallery of Art also hosts events throughout the year, including concerts, guided tours, gallery talks and much more.

Israeli contemporary art galleries

Tel Aviv Museum of Art

Israel’s largest art museum, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art opened in 1932. The museum shows the works of both Israeli and international artists across three main buildings, including the Department of Israeli Art, which holds a comprehensive collection of local art from the beginning of the 20th century to the present and the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, which encompasses international works from the mid-19th century to the present.

Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv

Opened in 1999, this gallery boasts custom-curated, site-specific installation exhibitions from Israeli and international artists. The gallery is considered to be among the most influential in Israel for contemporary art. Sommer Contemporary Art represents artists including Adi Nes, Ugo Rondinone and more. In addition to the main exhibition space, the gallery has initiated a smaller exhibition space "S2" which allows young curators to arrange small scale exhibitions of emerging artists. The gallery regularly presents site-specific installations formed from a continuing dialogue and that cannot be witnessed in other venues.

Alon Segev Gallery, Tel Aviv

The contemporary Alon Segev gallery displays the work of both young and established artists who work and live in both Israel and abroad. Established in 2000, the Alon Segev Gallery has represented many leading contemporary artists including: Sigalit Landau, Tal Mazliah and more. The gallery displays everything from complex installations through video, sculptures, drawing and painting.

Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv

In addition to exhibiting Israeli work, the Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art also contains an experimental space that aims to support young artists in their first shows. The collection, in Tel Aviv’s prestigious Bauhaus district is full of provocative and often comedic works by prominent and promising Israeli artists. Aside from the gallery’s main space, you can also find a project room where budding artists develop their debut exhibitions. Past exhibitions in 2018 include Shahar Yahalom: Nut Case; Nogah Engler: Barbarian in the Garden; Matan Ben-Tolila: Bat Kol and Orly Maiberg: Pending View.

Haifa Museum of Art

The Haifa Museum of Art was established in 1951 and since 1978 has been located in a historic building built in the 1930s as an Anglican girl’s school in Wadi Nisnas, downtown Haifa. Ranking as Israel's third largest art museum. The museum focuses on Israeli and international contemporary art, and its collection includes 7,000 items, mostly of contemporary Israeli art. The permanent collection includes works of Joseph Zaritsky, Mordechai Ardon and many more. The Haifa Museum of Art unfolds the story of Israeli culture from the beginning of the 20th century and the place of contemporary art in the age of globalisation.

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