As the one main American metropolis with free admission to all its artwork museums, St. Louis could also be in a league of its personal. Even DC, finest identified for the Smithsonian museums, has a number of, just like the Phillips Assortment and the Nationwide Museum of Girls within the Arts, that ask you to pay for admission.
It’s an excellent achievement, due to metropolis and state assist for the humanities and a funding mannequin that many people hope might be emulated elsewhere. This monetary accessibility alone makes the town an artwork vacation spot, however fortunately, the museums themselves are sights in their very own proper.
Sure, the land of toasted ravioli, St. Paul sandwiches, and cracker-like pizza needs to be in your radar for extra than simply meals and a visit to the Eero Saarinen-designed Gateway Arch. Listed here are a few of the artwork areas and museums that show it.
Saint Louis Artwork Museum
1 Fantastic Arts Drive (Forest Park), St. Louis, Missouri
A view of the large Anselm Kiefer artworks in the primary entrance corridor of the Saint Louis Artwork Museum
That is the town’s spectacular encyclopedic museum with a set of labor by Max Beckmann and different German modernists that may make your eyes bulge, however that’s not all. The establishment can be residence to implausible collections that embrace Picasso, Matisse, George Caleb Bingham, Indigenous artwork from South America, and even a very pretty Titian, “Christ Shown to the People (Ecce Homo)” (1570–76).
Proper now, the museum is internet hosting an enormous Anselm Kiefer exhibition by January 25, 2026, filling the doorway corridor and quite a few different galleries. (The works are so monumental that a few of the doorways needed to be eliminated to accommodate them.) Throughout a time of political turmoil, Kiefer typically grounds the viewer in a historical past that doesn’t at all times really feel previous tense. These works are significantly poignant for locals, because the artist drew inspiration from the Mississippi River that made the town wealthy within the nineteenth century, together with the Rhine River in his native Germany, to discover the symbolism of waterways and their pivotal roles all through historical past.
Up to date Artwork Museum St. Louis
3750 Washington Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri
A view of the Teresa Baker present on the Up to date Artwork Museum St. Louis
Two main exhibitions, one by Haegue Yang and the opposite by Teresa Baker, fill this vibrant artwork area, which is subsequent door to the equally pretty Pulitzer Artwork Basis. If you happen to go to earlier than February 8, 2026, you’ll be able to discover the colourful, formed abstraction of Baker, who incorporates supplies like willow, buffalo and deer conceal, tree bark, corn husks, and pure and synthetic sinew into her compositions. Or take a break to discover Yang’s heady staged installations, which rework typically mundane supplies of every kind into theatrical scenes.
Pulitzer Artwork Basis
3716 Washington Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri
This Tadao Ando-designed museum is a murals in itself. However now you will have the additional advantage of seeing not solely Jennie C. Jones’s chic abstraction on the primary flooring, however a superb exhibition curated by her, that includes different artists that helped set up or construct on the aesthetic languages she works with, together with Carmen Herrera, Agnes Martin, Martin Puryear, Alma Thomas, Mavis Pusey, and Zarina. Ensure that to take a while to relaxation of their second-floor sitting room, learn some associated supplies and catalogs, and revel in a view of the town.
Mildred Lane Kemper Artwork Museum at Washington College in St. Louis
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, Missouri
A customer takes a detailed have a look at the Suzanne Jackson paintings on show on the Kemper
This college museum has a number of smaller everlasting assortment galleries that span millennia, however the true draw this season is the massive exhibition of artwork by up to date girls artists from the Shah Garg Assortment. The present brings collectively 80 works by 69 artists, and it’s a pleasure to behold. Demonstrating Garg’s deep curiosity in artwork by girls, it principally avoids the scrapbook high quality of comparable exhibitions, whereas refusing to essentialize them into any neat class. Works by Melissa Cody, Simone Leigh, Kay WalkingStick, Maria Lassnig, Barbara Chase-Riboud, and Rose B. Simpson are a few of the highlights, however they’re positively not the one ones value a more in-depth look.
The Luminary
2701 Cherokee Road, St. Louis, Missouri
A customer Kiki Salem’s suspended rugs at The Luminary
This alt-space showcases a few of the finest rising artwork, and proper now, till December 13, they’re that includes work by St. Louis-based Palestinian artist Kiki Salem. She has created 48 suspended carpets with razor wire and gauze — the time period itself believed to be derived from the place title of Gaza and its historic function in textile manufacturing — that evoke the wonder and hazard of a spot caught between geopolitical forces and a seamless wrestle towards displacement and genocide.
Non Stndrd on the Nationwide Constructing Arts Middle
2300 Falling Springs Highway, Sauget, Illinois
A view of works by Leticia Pardo within the Nationwide Constructing Arts Middle, simply outdoors St. Louis
One of the uncommon areas within the St. Louis space — a roughly 15-minute drive from the town — is the results of the non-public amassing interest of the late Larry Giles, a historic preservationist and architectural salvager. Since his dying in 2021, the Nationwide Constructing Arts Middle has sadly turn out to be extra weathered and worn. Fortunately, native artists try to shine a light-weight on the commercial website to muster assist for its restoration. The present exhibition, titled A Matter of the Invisible and curated by Pia Singh, options two new site-specific installations by Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford and Leticia Pardo. Each creative interventions are well-suited to assist us dream up new prospects for a sprawling campus that apparently has one of many world’s largest archives of historic brick.
