Dinner date? Cliché. Cinema date? Passé. Museum date? Ooh la la.
Here at TheArtGorgeous HQ we’ve been dreaming up our dream arts and culture date locations, and we’ve found 12 spaces that would truly make us weak at the knees. Now, it’s true that you probably can’t tick all of these locations off your Wishlist within a short amount of time (and certainly not without a small fortune) but if you’re ever in any of these areas, find yourself some new arm-candy and take a romantic stroll.
Frank Gehry features heavily – maybe he’s the ultimate romantic architect?
Weisman Art Museum: Minneapolis, America
The design for the Weisman Art Museum was completed in 1993 and was designed by Frank Gehry at a time before computer-aided design, making its enormous and complicated composition even more impressive. It contains over 20,000 artworks and antiquities.
Art Gallery of Alberta: Alberta, Canada
The exterior of the Art Gallery of Alberta features zinc and stainless steel ‘ribbons’ meant to represent both the aurora and the North Saskatchewan River nearby. It houses over 6,000 artworks and its collection mainly focusses on local artists and makers.
Museo Guggenheim Bilbao: Bilbao, Spain
The second Gehry design on our list – the architect wanted the bends and ribbons of metal on the exterior of the Guggenheim space to look as if they were placed randomly. The Museo Guggenheim in Bilbao was opened by the King of Spain in 1997.
Messner Mountain Museum: Kronplatz, Italy
The Messner Mountain Museum is made up of 6 separate locations and was founded in 2006 by the Italian climber Reinhold Messer. This space was designed by the legendary British architect Zaha Hadid and is on the plateau of Kronplatz mountain (2275 metres above water level) and is a museum dedicated to mountaineering.
Niterói Contemporary Art Museum: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The MAC-Niterói was designed by Oscar Niemeyer and was completed in 1996. The museum holds the collection of João Sattamini (over 1200 works), the second largest collection of contemporary art in the whole of Brazil.
Fondation Louis Vuitton: Paris, France
Another Gehry for you, the Foundation Louis Vuitton building was inspired by the grand gardens of the 19th Century, the Grand Palais in Paris, and the elegance of sailboats carried by the wind. It is made up of 11 galleries, an auditorium, a roof terrace, and plenty of reception spaces to celebrate the iconic designer.
The Yves Saint Laurent Museum: Marrakech, Morrocco
Image via museeyslmarrakech.com
Another museum dedicated to a design legend – the Marrakesh museum of Yves Saint Laurent (located on Yves Saint Laurent street, near to where the French designer lived in Morocco) is dedicated to YSL’s life’s work. Over 700,000 people visit the terracotta building and its gardens each year, and the bricks and marble used to build it were sourced locally.
Anno Museum: Hamar, Norway
Anno Museum is dedicated to the history of the local area in Norway, and includes the ruins of a medieval cathedral housed under a glass pyramid designed by Lund & Slaatto and completed in 1998. You can actually still get married in the cathedral – if you get the permission of the Roman Catholic Church, that is.
The Dog Collar Museum: Leeds, England
Housed in beautiful Leeds Castle, the Museum of Dog Collars is exactly what its name suggests. It contains over 130 examples of rare and antique dog collars, donated by Mrs Gertrude Hunt in 1977 in memory of her late husband John.
The Hanoi Museum: Hanoi, Vietnam
Image via gmp.de
The Museum of Hanoi houses over 50,000 artworks, artifacts and objects from the city’s millennium-long history. It’s striking design of an inverted pyramid was created in 2010 by Von Gerkan, Marg, and Partners after they won an international competition to design the space in 2005.
Author: Verity Babbs
