Summer 2026 is in full swing, and it’s been an exciting one so far, with highlights ranging from the FIFA World Cup to The Odyssey.
But as we enter the quieter phase of the season, your calendar might be a little more open, making it the perfect time to add an art excursion to your summer agenda.
Though some art acolytes will certainly be venturing to visit the Venice Biennale 2026, by and large, the summer is a sleepier season for the art world’s major cities. It’s thus a good time of year to get off the beaten path and take a detour. Day trips, by car, train, or ferry, are an easy way to experience art at a slower, more focused pace.
We’ve put together a list of seven standout institutions reachable from major cities—all accessible with little effort. At each of these destinations, you’ll find idyllic settings, world-class architecture, and unforgettable art.
This summer, there are can’t-miss exhibitions on view, too, from Issy Wood’s first Nordic museum show at the Kistefos Museum in Norway to Anicka Yi’s first large-scale outdoor project at Storm King in upstate New York.
Instituto Inhotim
Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, Brazil
Getting there: About an hour away by car from Belo Horizonte, Brazil, served by Confins International Airport.
Wander the sprawling open-air museum and gardens of Brazil’s Instituto Inhotim as birds fly overhead and tropical plants provide a canopy of green.
Founded in 2004 by collector Bernardo Paz and set in the verdant hills of Minas Gerais, Instituto Inhotim opened to the public in 2006.
There is no place else quite like it.
Occupying over 5,000 acres, the institute is both a nature preserve, home to over 1,000 plant species, and a singular art venue encompassing sculpture gardens and close to two dozen galleries showing both permanent collection and temporary exhibitions. Currently, over 900 works by 50 artists are on view.
Inhotim turns 20 in 2026, and it’s marking the anniversary with new site-specific commissions as well as with the return of The Murder of Crows (2008), Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s 98-speaker sound installation later this fall.
These will be on view alongside works by Cildo Meireles, Doris Salcedo, Matthew Barney, and Hélio Oiticica, among others.
Storm King Art Center
New Windsor, New York
Getting there: About 90 minutes from New York City by car, or by Metro-North train plus a shuttle.
Less than two hours from the hubbub of midtown Manhattan lies Storm King, a 500-acre sculpture park situated on rolling meadows. Here, one can easily spend a day wandering on foot, discovering monumental sculptures and installations around every corner. Among the perennial highlights are Maya Lin’s rolling hill Storm King Wavefield (2009), Alexander Calder’s towering red steel Five Swords (1976), and Menashe Kadishman’s Suspended (1977), which is among the center’s most popular photo ops.
Opened to the public in 1960, the pioneering outdoor space continues to embrace contemporary art with yearly temporary exhibitions. The 2026 season brings Anicka Yi’s first large-scale outdoor project, an installation of towering acrylic columns filled with organic matter set into a seven-acre field. Also on view are artist Saif Azzuz’s steel-and-salvage sturgeon and artist Liz Glynn’s concrete casts of Gilded Age furniture.
For ambitious art lovers, the trip can be paired with a visit to Dia Beacon, 20 minutes away across the river, for a combination of outdoor and indoor Minimalist and land art in a single trip.
The 2026 season runs through November 9th.
Kistefos Museum
Jevnaker, Norway
Getting there: About an hour’s drive or express bus from Oslo.
As visitors approach, the Kistefos Museum’s building is likely to stop visitors dead in their tracks. Set along the Randselva river, the stunning museum, designed by the Bjarke Ingels Group, is known as “The Twist.” The massive building, glass at one end, folded aluminum on the other, represents just that, twisting its horizontal form across the length of the river. At once a gallery, a sculpture, and a bridge, the structure is an architectural destination in its own right.
But that’s just the start. The museum is home to a sculpture park built around a 19th-century wood-pulp mill (old machinery is still visible, as is timber and turbines). Currently, more than 50 outdoor works are located along the riverbank and surrounding forest; these include a new 13-ton bronze by Dana Schutz, her largest work to date. A new Marguerite Humeau commission will be arriving this fall.
This year, museum exhibitions are also noteworthy. Issy Wood’s first major exhibition in the Nordic region, titled “Fish, Fish, Duck,” is currently on view. The show brings together a selection of Wood’s seductive and restrained compositions that draw from the internet, advertising, auction catalogues, and popular culture to create uneasy images that tap into questions of desire and power.
Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum
Joshua Tree, California
Getting there: About two hours from Los Angeles by car. The site is unstaffed, so visit during daylight and bring water.
For those who want an unmediated art experience in the American desert, the Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum is an ideal destination. At an unmarked turnoff on a dirt road in the Mojave Desert lies a sprawling 10-acre sculpture park with works made of bicycle parts, television sets, toilets, and salvaged wood.
The American artist Noah Purifoy moved out there in 1989 and spent the last 15 years of his life building the site alone. Purifoy is considered the father of the West Coast assemblage movement. He was influenced in part by the found debris he began working with after the 1965 Watts riot.
After decades in Los Angeles, he created the museum as his final and largest body of work. The sprawling work was nearly bulldozed in 2001 before a foundation of his friends stepped in to preserve it. The site is free to visit. There are no tickets or explanatory texts. It’s an increasingly rare opportunity for a raw encounter with an artist’s unadulterated vision at such a scale.
Museum SAN
Wonju, South Korea
Getting there: Roughly 90 minutes to 2 hours from Seoul by car, bus, or train. A car or taxi is recommended for the final stretch to the museum.
Located in the Oak Valley, a resort in Gangwon Province, Museum SAN opened in 2013, a space where art and nature could commune. The museum’s name is an acronym, which stands for “space, art, nature.” Today, the museum is one of Korea’s most significant private museums, welcoming hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.
Designed by Pritzker Prize–winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando, the museum is an elegant concrete-and-glass structure that seems to emerge from the terrain. Adding to the serene effect are a reflecting pool, a stone garden, and a flower field planted in concentric rings on the grounds. Ando’s relationship with the museum has continued over a decade, with the architect subsequently contributing the Meditation Hall (2018) and Space of Light (2023). In 2025, he revealed his newest structure, Ground, an arched concrete chamber conceived with British artist Antony Gormley, whose works are on view inside.
Remarkably, five James Turrell works—Sky Space, Horizon Room, Ganzfeld, Wedgework, and Space Division—are also on permanent view at the museum. But beyond these Turrell environments, the museum has a prominent collection, with a distinct focus on paper artworks ranging from hanji crafts to paper books and everything in between.
Glenstone Museum
Potomac, Maryland
Getting there: Glenstone is about an hour from Washington, D.C., or Baltimore. Admission is free, but timed tickets must be booked online in advance.
Glenstone is only 15 miles from downtown Washington, D.C., but it feels a world away. Situated on rolling hills, the museum is a tranquil and contemplative space founded to be a space where art, architecture, and landscape are considered a single work.
This year, Glenstone celebrates its 20th year with a host of programming and talks focused on everything from Jeff Koons’s Split-Rocker (2000) (perhaps the museum’s most iconic work) to the architecture of Charles Gwathmey, who designed Glenstone’s original museum buildings (later expansions by Thomas Phifer and Partners are also marvelous).
Also on view are special exhibitions including “Andrea Bowers,” an exhibition that brings together over 40 works by the American artist, making it one of the largest exhibitions of Bowers’ work to date.
Muzeum Susch
Susch, Switzerland
Getting there: Susch is just over two hours from Zürich by car or train.
In a fairytale-like village of the Swiss Alps lies Muzeum Susch, a museum housed in what once was a medieval monastery and 19th-century brewery. The museum, which opened in 2018, is the project of Polish art collector and philanthropist Grażyna Kulczyk and offers a one-of-a-kind art-viewing experience.
The museum is primarily focused women artists, and artworks that focus on matrilineal histories and overlooked histories. Muzeum Susch has more than a dozen permanent installations on view, many site-specific, by artists including Tracey Emin, Monika Sosnowska, and Magdalena Abakanowicz.
On view now is “Unraveling,” the first major retrospective of the mid-20th-century Italian artist and activist Mariuccia Secol, tracing seven decades of a practice that moved from painting into aprons, metal scouring pads, and a wedding dress dismantled by hand, a powerful commentary on domestic labor.
