7 Southern Art Museums & Installations Worth Planning a Trip Around
Pack your weekender and set your sights on these incredible art museums, exhibits, and installations across the South! Image: Facebook / The Dalí Museum
Whether you’re an art aficionado or simply enjoy looking at pretty things, wandering around an art museum can inspire the mind and invigorate the spirit. Art museums offer a chance to slow down, look closely, and experience the world through someone else’s perspective. Across the South, exceptional museums and installations showcase everything from centuries-old masterpieces to boundary-pushing contemporary works. Here are a few destinations worth adding to your list.
High Museum of Art
Location: Atlanta, Georgia
Best time to visit: September 25 through November 29 to experience both the “Martin Puryear: Nexus” and “Los Porfiados” exhibits.
More Info: high.org
The High Museum of Art is one of the South’s leading encyclopedic art museums. Its collection of more than 20,000 works spans history, countries, and mediums. You’ll discover art from world-renowned visionaries, Southern self-taught folk artists, and everyone in between. You can see Monet’s “Houses of Parliament in the Fog” (1903), Bellini’s “Madonna and Child” (c. 1510), Rodin’s “Eternal Spring” (1884), and Cassatt’s “Sketch of a Mother Looking Down at Thomas” (c. 1893) — just to name a few.
This month, the High will open the “Nexus” exhibition, featuring more than 70 pieces by sculptor Martin Puryear. It’s the only venue in the Southeast to host the presentation, which features the most comprehensive collection of the artist’s work in more than two decades and includes sculptures in wood, marble, bronze, and glass.
The exhibition will run until January 17, 2027, but if you can make it to the High before Thanksgiving, you’ll also enjoy the “Los Porfiados” (“The Stubborns”) on the museum’s piazza. This playful, interactive exhibit is designed for kids of all ages and features 14 giant pliable sculptures inspired by the classic wobbling toy, The Weebles.
Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience (The MAX)
Location: Meridian, Mississippi
Best time to go: Now through March 27, 2027, to check out the “John Jennings: Build Your World” exhibit
More Info: msarts.org
The Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience is a celebration of the state’s legacy in every expression of the arts. This imaginative and immersive experience invites you to step into the world that nurtured countless Mississippi artists through a collection of interactive exhibits that bring their stories to life.
The crown jewel of The MAX is the 360-degree Hall of Fame, spotlighting the most iconic Mississippians to have ever made their mark in the arts. The two-story rotunda pays homage to the greats like artists George Ohr and Walter Inglis Anderson, actors Morgan Freeman and Oprah Winfrey, and musicians Sam Cooke and Jimmy Buffett.
Currently on view through March 27, 2027, “John Jennings: Build Your World” offers a glimpse into the imagination of the award-winning graphic novelist John Jennings.
A native of Flora, Mississippi, John Jennings’s work combines Afrofuturism, folklore, and comics to explore a future of liberation informed by the realities of the past. The exhibition focuses on four featured works, including “Kindred,” the New York Times bestselling adaptation of Octavia Butler’s seminal work, along with Marvel comics and a brand-new Southern-Gothic tale, “Kenny Dreadful and the Hainted Hoodie.”
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Location: Richmond, Virginia
Best time to visit: Anytime! The VMFA is the only art museum in the U.S. open 365 days a year with free general admission.
More Info: vmfa.museum
With a permanent collection of more than 50,000 works spanning 6,000 years, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is a Richmond destination worth planning a trip around. It’s home to some of the finest South Asian, Himalayan, and African artworks in the country, and it’s known for its Art Nouveau, Art Deco, French Impressionist, and Modern American collections, among many others.
It is also home to the largest public collection of Fabergé pieces outside of Russia.
And it’s only getting better. The VMFA is currently undergoing the largest expansion and renovation in its history. The new, 173,000-square-foot McGlothlin Wing II will house and expand the museum’s Contemporary and African art spaces (making it the second-largest African art space in the country) while also adding a new space for American and Indigenous American art.
The renovation is designed to enhance the museum’s visitor experience with a new cafe, larger galleries, and a fifth-floor terrace overlooking the Robins Sculpture Garden.
The Dalí Museum
Location: St. Petersburg, Florida
Best time to go: Now through October 18 to view the “Dalí in America” and “Dalí’s Tarot” exhibitions.
More Info: thedali.org
The Dalí Museum is the only single-artist site on our list. Best known for his surrealist painting of melting watches, Salvador Dalí left more than 2,000 of his vast and varied works, including oil paintings, photos, sculptures, drawings, manuscripts, and more, to this St. Petersburg museum.
The building itself is inspired by the artist’s exploration of the functional and the fantastical, with its rectangular, hurricane-proof perimeter paired with a whimsical geodesic glass feature affectionately known as the “enigma.”
The museum offers unique experiences of Dalí’s work through rotating exhibits and a 360-degree immersive Dalí Dome. One of the more distinctive offerings is the Ask Dalí audio experience, which lets you ask a question and hear an AI-generated answer in the recreated voice of Salvador Dalí.
And there’s more to come! Plans are underway for an innovative museum expansion, currently slated for 2028. The new wing will include an interactive gallery hall and a learning center that will let you experience the works of this great artist in a brand-new way.
Meow Wolf Installations
Locations: Grapevine and Houston, Texas
Best time to go: Anytime, and check Meow Wolf’s events calendar for upcoming attractions.
More Info: meowwolf.com
Meow Wolf is a leading name in immersive, interactive art in the U.S., and Texas hosts its only two installations in the South. Both Houston and Grapevine offer a Meow Wolf exhibit — but they are fantastically different experiences.
In Houston, Meow Wolf’s “Radio Tave” installation takes you on a sonic journey through a radio station’s discovery of an interdimensional signal, leading to strange new sounds and spaces sure to alter your frequency. In Grapevine, “The Real Unreal” inexplicably weaves the everyday with fantastical realms.
You’ll start in an unassuming family home before stumbling upon secret passageways that lead to worlds unknown. Both installations feature Texas artists and promise whimsical, maximalist artscapes and unexpected discoveries at every turn.
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Location: Bentonville, Arkansas
Best time to go: Now through January 25, 2027, to catch both the “Keith Haring in 3D” and “Grandma Moses: A Good Day’s Work” exhibitions.
More Info: crystalbridges.org
Tucked away on 134 acres and surrounded by the beauty of the Ozark forest, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is a crowning jewel in the cultural landscape of Arkansas — and the South. Just this year, the museum debuted a 114,000-square-foot expansion featuring a new contemporary gallery, along with several exciting spaces to enjoy and explore.
An architectural wonder designed by world-renowned architect Moshe Safdie, the museum itself is a work of art with its bridges and pavilions resting on spring-fed ponds that seamlessly intertwine with the natural surroundings. Inside, the museum houses a premier collection of American art spanning five centuries, earning it the nickname “America’s Art Museum.”
Classic and modern pieces, including Asher B. Durand’s “Kindred Spirits” (1849), Norman Rockwell’s “Rosie the Riveter” (1943), and Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Mirrored Room – My Heart Is Dancing into the Universe” (2018), all call Crystal Bridges home.
Outside, five miles of sculpture and walking trails double as exhibits and include Frank Lloyd Wright’s reconstructed Bachman-Wilson Usonian house and the James Turrell “The Way of Color” Skyspace.
New Orleans Museum of Art
Location: New Orleans, Louisiana
Best time to visit: From November 20, 2026, through February 14, 2027, to experience NOMA’s exciting new exhibitions, “Second Nature,” “Shelter,” and “Confluence.”
More Info: noma.org
Since opening its doors in 1911, the New Orleans Museum of Art has offered a premier collection of works across cultures and mediums. If you’ve never been, consider this winter’s exhibition lineup your sign to make the trip. Beginning October 2, more than 50 beautiful Japanese Rinpa hanging scrolls, folding screens, fan paintings, and more will grace the exhibition hall as part of “Second Nature: Japanese Rinpa Paintings from the Gitter-Yelen Collection.”
Starting November 6, you can also catch American artist Danielle Mckinney’s survey exhibition, “Shelter,” featuring her intimate paintings of female subjects in private solitude. “Confluence,” a thematic collection of photographs from New Orleans-based photographer Tina Freeman’s personal collection featuring more than 70 artists, opens November 20, rounding out the season’s offerings.
If you can make it to NOMA before October 11, you’ll be treated to a presentation of selected photographs from New Orleans artist George Dureau.
There’s also an exquisite collection of 18th-century French porcelain, as well as awe-inspiring religious and iconographic paintings by Peruvian and Bolivian Indigenous and Mestizo artists from the 17th and 18th centuries on view. You can peruse the more than 90 sculptures that grace the stunning Besthoff Sculpture Garden at no cost every day, and enjoy free admission to NOMA every Wednesday.
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Katie Leigh Matthews
A Birmingham native, Katie is a lifelong waterfall chaser and is passionate about the outdoors. She also loves connecting with remarkable women in the Birmingham community and bringing their stories to life. Katie has been writing professionally for over six years; you can find more of her work at Moms.com and Islands.com.
