The prestigious Prix Versailles recognizes beautiful architecture and design all over the world at an annual awards program held at UNESCO for the last 10 years—and two U.S. museums show up on its list of the World’s Most Beautiful Museums, released earlier this month. The list each year focuses on new or recently renovated structures. Museums showcase beauty, so it's always wonderful when the building itself is a piece of art. It enhances the visit and makes you feel like you are entered a hallowed space.
The list is short, with only seven museums on it this year. While we admire the architecture of the Saka Museum in Bali with steel and glass providing a beautiful counterpoint to the ancient artifacts inside and are thrilled to see the Grand Palais in Paris finally emerge from four years of work, it’s really the two U.S. museums that catch our attention.
In Ohio, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History has won a spot on the list. As recently renovated by the DLR Group, its architecture showcases Northeast Ohio’s geological history and especially its historic glaciers, which formed the Great Lakes. The glaciers’ flow is interpreted at the museum with “flowing white alluvial forms in a single, continuous concept to unify the various parts of the facility,” says the Prix Versailles statement. The original museum is a century old, and its collections tell the story of the life of Earth, back to the time of dinosaurs.
Likewise, the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, has emerged from a two-year renovation of two of its three unique structures and the addition of a third, all connected to each other. These include the original Art Deco Joslyn building from 1931 designed by John and Alan McDonald; the 1994 pavilion by Norman Foster as his first American commission (he’s behind the incredible transformation at San Francisco’s iconic Transamerica Pyramid), and 2024’s new pavilion designed by Snøhetta (the group behind San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art 2016 addition). The museum offers free entry and collections that vary widely: from Amy Sherald’s “The Beauty of Change” (2023) to medieval Old Masters.
Here is the full list of the seven Most Beautiful Museums in the World. It appears not to be a ranked list, but rather organized alphabetically by country:
- Grand Palais, Paris, France
- Saka Museum, Bali, Indonesia
- Audeum, Seoul, Republic of Korea
- Kuntstsllo, Kristiansand, Norway
- Diriyah Art Futures, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Cleveland, United States
- Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, United States