Harvard Art Museums
Three collections, one Renzo Piano glass roof — and conservation labs that have been running since 1928.
Coming soon on iOS — be first to walk Boston offline.
The Fogg (1895), Busch-Reisinger (1903), and Sackler (1985) museums share a single building redesigned by Renzo Piano, reopened November 2014 with 40% more gallery space. About 250,000 objects span antiquity to the present across six levels — Europe, East Asia, the Middle East, and beyond. A street-level look at the facade gives little away: the glass pyramidal roof is mostly hidden from the front.
What to look for
- The truncated glass pyramidal roof — dramatic from inside, mostly hidden from Quincy Street
- Six gallery levels uniting three formerly separate museums under one address
- The Straus Center for Conservation, one of four on-site research centers operating since 1928
32 Quincy Street, Cambridge; roughly 43,000 sq ft of the 204,000 sq ft building is dedicated to public exhibitions.
Harvard Art Museums is one of 31 sights worth the detour in Boston, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Boston pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Boston
- Museum of Fine Arts BostonFour hundred and fifty thousand works of art under one roof — one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas.
- TD GardenThe subway stops underneath it — TD Garden is built directly above MBTA's North Station, so you step off the train and you are already at the door.
- Harvard College ObservatoryOn the night of July 16-17, 1850, astronomers here made the first daguerreotype of a star — Vega — through a telescope that was the largest in North America.
- Fenway ParkThe oldest active ballpark in MLB, where a cramped city block accidentally invented some of baseball's most famous features.
- Isabella Stewart Gardner MuseumIn 1990, thieves walked out with thirteen works worth $500 million — none have ever come back, and the case is still open.
- Boston Public LibraryJohn Adams' personal 3,800-volume library lives here — and any Massachusetts adult can walk in and access it.