The best art museum in the country is nearby, but it’s not the one you’re thinking of.
USA Today’s travel experts pick 20 nominees, and then readers vote on their favorite.
The 10Best polls include festivals, beer labels, museums, meal delivery services and much more.
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Most metro Atlanta residents probably assume the high-ranking Georgia museum is the High Museum. Most metro Atlanta residents would be incorrect.
Just north of Atlanta, up Interstate 75 in Cartersville, is the Booth Western Art Museum. The Booth now holds USA Today's title of best art museum in the United States.
The Booth, which opened in 2003, is the world's largest permanent exhibition space for Western art. It's 120,000 square feet are "an architectural wonder — designed to resemble a modern pueblo and constructed from Bulgarian limestone," its website states.
» Photos: The Booth Western Art Museum
The Booth is named for Sam Booth, a good friend of the museum’s founders, and is operated under the umbrella of Georgia Museums Inc., which includes Tellus Science Museum and the Bartow History Museum.
There’s more than just Western art at the Booth. The Millar Presidential Gallery displays a portrait and an original, signed letter from each U.S. president.
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Here are the 10Best art museums, according to USA Today readers:
- Booth Western Art Museum: Cartersville
- Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art: Bentonville, Ark.
- Detroit Institute of Arts: Detroit
- Nevada Museum of Art: Reno
- Kimbell Art Museum: Fort Worth
- Art Institute of Chicago: Chicago
- Chihuly Garden and Glass: Seattle
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art: New York
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art: Los Angeles
- Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: Houston
The Booth isn't the only Georgia museum to be recognized by USA Today readers. The National Infantry Museum and Soldier Center in Columbus finished No. 3 for best history museum.
The infantry museum “preserves and displays one of the greatest collections of military artifacts in the world, with 190,000 square feet of galleries standing on a 200-acre tract just outside the United States Army Maneuver Center of Excellence (MCoE) at Fort Benning, Georgia,” its website states.
Here are the 10Best history museums, selected by USA Today readers:
- National Museum of the Marine Corps: Triangle, Va.
- The Henry Ford: Dearborn, Mich.
- National Infantry Museum and Soldier Center: Columbus
- The Mob Museum: Las Vegas
- National Museum of the Pacific War: Fredericksburg, Texas
- The American Revolution Museum at Yorktown: Yorktown, Va.
- Museum of Native American History: Bentonville, Ark.
- National Civil Rights Museum: Memphis
- The National WWII Museum: New Orleans
- Museum of History and Industry: Seattle
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