From a golden hilltop in Los Angeles to a Baroque palace in Vienna — a highly personal, fiercely defended list.
The Little Art School’s Founding Partner, Joanne Robinson hasn’t visited every art gallery on earth — yet. This is her personal list, passionately held and openly debated. If you disagree, good. Tell us your top five in the comments; we would LOVE to know!
1.LOS ANGELES, USA
The Getty Center
If I had all the money in the world, this is the collection I would buy. Which is, more or less, exactly what the Getty Trust did. Funded by oil tycoon J. Paul Getty’s bequest — the largest art endowment in the world — the Getty didn’t inherit greatness through centuries of royal collecting. It built it, deliberately and brilliantly, in just a few decades.
Richard Meier’s 1997 hilltop campus above Bel-Air is one of the most celebrated works of late 20th-century architecture anywhere. You arrive by tram, ascend above the city, and step into travertine courtyards with views stretching to the Pacific. The building doesn’t just house art — it is art.
“When I stood in front of Van Gogh’s Irises I was completely mesmerised. The frenzied energy of the brushwork stops you in your tracks. Free admission too — one of the great democratic gestures in the art world.”
And here’s the thing about that brushwork. Those thick, expressive dabs of colour — that’s a learnable technique. Van Gogh taught himself to paint. If you’ve ever stood in front of his work and felt that itch in your fingers, that’s not admiration. That’s the beginning of something.
2. THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS
The Mauritshuis
Narrowly, agonisingly pipped to the top spot for me — but in many ways the Mauritshuis is the more extraordinary achievement. Around 800 works in a 17th-century Dutch mansion. The concentration of masterpiece per square metre is almost unmatched anywhere on earth.
Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring lives here. So does his View of Delft — the painting Proust called the most beautiful thing in the world. And Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp. And Carel Fabritius’s tiny, startling Goldfinch. In one building. On one afternoon.
The Dutch Golden Age was one of the most explosive flowerings of visual art in history — Vermeer, Rembrandt, Hals, all working at the same time, in the same small country. The Mauritshuis proves a gallery doesn’t need to be vast to be world-class. It just needs to be excellent.
3. NEW YORK, USA
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
But if you’re looking for vast, look no further! Over 1.5 million works. Five thousand years of human creativity. The Met is so vast that a day isn’t enough — you need weeks to get genuinely lost in it, and those weeks would be among the best of your life. Vermeer, Rembrandt, El Greco, Monet, Degas, Picasso, Caravaggio — many individual departments would rank among the world’s best standalone museums. The building itself, two million square feet on the edge of Central Park, creates an experience unlike anywhere else.
4. LONDON, UK
Tate Britain
London has extraordinary galleries — the National, the V&A, the Courtauld — but it’s always Tate Britain that draws me back. Partly for Sargent’s Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, which never fails to take my breath away. Partly for Turner’s extraordinary bequest — around 300 oil paintings, the greatest collection of his work anywhere. And partly for the Pre-Raphaelites.
“I can’t count how many times I’ve stood in front of Ophelia and every time I see something new. That is the sign of a truly great painting — and a truly great gallery.”
Tate Britain is unapologetically national in its focus, and that’s its strength. Five hundred years of how people on these islands have seen and reimagined their world. It tells a story — and the best galleries always do.
5. VIENNA, AUSTRIA
The Belvedere
I know, I know — many would put the Kunsthistorisches in Vienna here instead. But there is something genuinely enchanting about the Belvedere. The Baroque palace complex, built for Prince Eugene of Savoy, is one of the most beautiful buildings in Europe. And then there are the Klimts.
The Belvedere holds the world’s most important collection of Gustav Klimt, including The Kiss — arguably the most beloved painting in the German-speaking world. It’s a pilgrimage.
“Oh, the Klimts!! Standing in that room is like stepping into a fever dream of gold and longing. It has to be seen.”
So that’s my five. A hilltop in LA. A mansion in The Hague. A building the size of a small city in New York. A riverside gallery in London. A Baroque palace in Vienna.
What are yours?
Inspired? Now try making art yourself.
Every gallery on this list is full of techniques anyone can learn. Our online art course for beginners starts you gently — from your first line to your first finished painting. We begin with a simple watercolour and end, after 180 of our structured, progressive drawing and painting course, by painting ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ in oils. On the journey, completed in your own time and at your own pace, you will learn from the Masters, including Van Gogh, Klimt, Monet and many others. All your art materials are included in the course cost and every course purchased supports our charity’s work bringing art education to everyone.
Find out more about about our Online Art Course here