What is the most striking art museum building in America?

Spiral ramps, floating roofs and metal skins: architects have used American museums as their boldest canvases. Some are century-old temples, others only a decade old.

1. 1
   Walker Art Center

   The Herzog & de Meuron expansion of 2005 adds a crumpled, stamped-aluminum tower to Minneapolis's modernist arts campus.
   1000pts
2. 2
   National Gallery of Art East Building

   I. M. Pei's 1978 wedge-shaped modernist wing on the National Mall, built from sharp-edged pink Tennessee marble.
   930pts
3. 3
   Milwaukee Art Museum

   Santiago Calatrava's 2001 Quadracci Pavilion, whose winged brise soleil opens and closes above Lake Michigan.
   891pts
4. 4
   Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

   Moshe Safdie's 2011 pavilions in an Arkansas ravine, arcing over spring-fed ponds under copper-and-wood roofs.
   849pts
5. 5
   Guggenheim Museum

   Frank Lloyd Wright's white spiral rotunda on Fifth Avenue, opened in 1959 and one of the most recognizable buildings in the country.
   818pts
6. 6
   Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

   Steven Holl's 2007 Bloch Building, a set of translucent glass 'lenses' that glow beside the original classical hall.
   734pts
7. 7
   Metropolitan Museum of Art

   The Beaux-Arts Fifth Avenue facade by Richard Morris Hunt and later McKim, Mead & White, the grand front door of New York's largest museum.
   636pts
8. 8
   Menil Collection

   Renzo Piano's 1987 gray-clapboard museum in Houston, known for its serene, light-filtering leaf-shaped roof baffles.
   636pts
9. 9
   Denver Art Museum Hamilton Building

   Daniel Libeskind's 2006 titanium-clad building of jagged, tilting angles that has become a symbol of Denver.
   636pts
10. 10
    Kimbell Art Museum

    Louis Kahn's 1972 Fort Worth masterpiece of concrete vaults and silvery natural light, often called the best-lit museum in the world.
    520pts
11. 11
    Getty Center

    Richard Meier's travertine-clad hilltop campus above Los Angeles, opened in 1997 with sweeping gardens and city views.
    520pts
12. 12
    Art Institute of Chicago Modern Wing

    Renzo Piano's 2009 addition, topped by a floating 'flying carpet' roof that filters daylight into the galleries.
    382pts
13. 13
    San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

    Mario Botta's 1995 brick building with its signature striped cylindrical skylight, since expanded by Snohetta.
    382pts
14. 14
    Whitney Museum of American Art

    Renzo Piano's 2015 stacked, angular building beside the High Line in the Meatpacking District.
    382pts
15. 15
    Museum of Modern Art

    Yoshio Taniguchi's 2004 redesign of MoMA, a calm, luminous glass-and-steel expansion wrapped around the sculpture garden.
    382pts
16. 16
    Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

    Tadao Ando's 2002 composition of concrete boxes and glass walls floating over a reflecting pond.
    382pts
17. 17
    de Young Museum

    Herzog & de Meuron's copper-clad museum in Golden Gate Park, with a twisting observation tower rising above the trees.
    0pts

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