12 University Art Museums You Probably Don’t Know (But Should)

Featured on blouinartinfo.com

Looking to take a road trip this fall? To mark the new school year, ARTINFO has compiled a list of 12 (mostly) off-the-beaten-path university art museums that are worth the trip, from Maine to Washington State.

University: Smith College

Museum: Smith College Museum of Art (SCMA)

Location: Northampton, Massachusetts

Museum Director: Jessica Nicoll

Why It’s Worth the Trip: Smith’s collection contains multitudes, with American, Asian, African, and European art spanning from ancient to contemporary, pitting Picassos and Kandinskys against yamato-ehandscrolls and works by Nigeria’s Yoruba peoples. Plus, as part of a women’s college, the museum doesn’t disappoint when it comes to female artists. Last October, SCMA hosted a solo show by Tara Donovan (of slinky sculpture fame), and coming up on September 11, the exhibition “Women’s Work” will showcase some of the collection’s feminist pieces, including works by Carolee Schneemann, Judy Chicago, and the Guerrilla Girls. (See also: Mary Cassatt, Joan Mitchell, and more, on view in the permanent collection.) Even those who’ve visited in the past may want to swing through again to check out the newly renovated second and third floors; construction on the ground floor, to create a new Asian art gallery and digital screening room, is set to be finished in October.

Added Bonus: Even the bathrooms are decked out with works of art, designed Ellen Driscoll and Smith alum Sandy Skoglund. Plus, if you’re in the mood to hit two school museums in one day, the nearbyWilliams College Museum of Art is also noteworthy. (This fall, they’re showing off a new Sol LeWitt wall drawing.)

University: Indiana University

Museum: Indiana University Art Museum

Location: Bloomington, Indiana

Museum Director: David A. Brenneman

Why It’s Worth the Trip: Housed in a triangular building designed by I.M. Pei, the Indiana University Art Museum holds 45,000 objects in its overall collection, divided into six disciplines: Ancient Western art; Asian art; the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Ancient Americas; Western art before 1800; Western art after 1800; and works on paper. Coming up at the end of this month is a show of 17th-century Italian artist Annibale Carracci’s depictions of Greek mythology, as reprinted by French engraver Claude Lefèbvre, alongside an exhibition exploring the significance of the Indian sari. Plus, several Tony Rosenthal sculptures are permanently on view — including “Indiana Totem,” 1989, in the mezzanine, its thin, vertical structure intended to play off the open space of the atrium.

Added Bonus: Musician — and prolific painter — John Mellencamp lives in Bloomington.

University: Mills College

Museum: Mills College Art Museum

Location: Oakland, California

Museum Director: Stephanie Hanor

Why It’s Worth the Trip: Noted for its forward-thinking music program, Mills College also boasts a museum with more than 8,000 works in its permanent collection, the largest of any liberal arts college on the west coast. Works by San Francisco-based photographers such as Ansel Adams and John Gutmann, paintings by László Moholy-Nagy and Diego Rivera, and approximately 8,000 prints and drawings with a focus on German Expressionists and Bauhaus faculty members are included. The initial gift of works for the permanent collection was courtesy of Albert M. Bender — who later became one of the founders of what became the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art — and was the first public collection of modern art in Northern California. 

University: Colby College

Museum: Colby Museum of Art

Location: Waterville, Maine

Museum Director: Sharon Corwin

Why It’s Worth the Trip: The small private college’s museum gave itself a facelift in 2013, with LA’s Frederick Fisher and Partners designing a light-filled addition (the Alfond-Lunder Family Pavilion), making this a destination for architecture as well as art. Ditto for anyone obsessed with Alex Katz: Colby has a whopping 900 of his works in its collection, many on permanent display in the museum’s Schupf Wing. Other areas of focus in the 8,000-strong holdings include American folk art, and paintings by the likes of George Bellows and Marsden Hartley. The Colby Museum of Art has a show of Katz work from the 1950s up through October 18; in late September, Peter Mariano will transform the lobby space with a wall painting, on view until May 2016.

Added Bonus: The museum has launched a project, dubbed “Young Curators,” which aims to involve local high school students in its programming. 

Click here to view the full list.