The 25 best museums in America, RANKED

This modern museum located near the Hudson River in Beacon, New York, is a remodeled printing plant that Nabisco built way back in 1929.

Located near the borough's Prospect Park, this museum contains a sizable collection of works from around the world, and houses an impressive gallery of feminist art.

This Kansas City museum is filled with beautiful works of art, but it's best known for the giant shuttlecocks on the lawn outside the building.

This branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC was originally known as "the American Louvre" when it was built in 1859.

Even the roof of this San Francisco natural history museum is an exhibit. The green roof that sits on top of the museum's planetarium and various aquariums is environmentally friendly mini-landscape covered with native plants.

"Appeal to the Great Spirit," a powerful statue of a Native American riding a horse, stands outside this Boston museum — the fourth-most visited museum in the United States.

This influential midtown Manhattan contemporary art museum contains famous works including Roy Lichtenstein's "Drowning Girl," and Vincent van Gough's "The Starry Night."

The former villa of early 20th Century businessman James Deering in Miami's Coconut Grove neighborhood currently exists as a display of formal gardens in the style of the Italian Renaissance as well as antiques and art from the era.

MFAH contains about 64,000 works of art in its many galleries, but James Turrell's The Light Inside —the stunning, seemingly floating illuminated tunnel that connects the two buildings — is one of the most memorable.

As known as the Henry Ford, this sprawling outdoor museum in Dearborn, Michigan, contains several important artifacts from American history, including Rosa Parks' bus, Thomas Edison's lab, JFK's limousine, and the chair President Lincoln was sitting in at Ford's theater.

This contemporary art museum in downtown Los Angeles contains the largest collection of renowned photographer Cindy Sherman's art in the world.

In 1966 this collection began life as a new wing of San Francisco's de Young Museum, but in 2003 it moved into a space of its own. With more than 18,000 works of art from all across the world's largest continent, it's one of the most comprehensive collections of Asian Art.

This 40-gallery Raleigh museum was one of the first in America to be created via state legislation and funding.

The building of this Texas museum is a work of at itself, having been designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando.

More than 360 aircraft and missiles are on display at this Dayton, Ohio attraction, including the Boeing B-29 Superfortress that dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki and the Boeing plane that served as Air Force One in the '60s and '70s.

Visitors to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida can get up-close with a restored Saturn V rocket and real command module from Apollo 14, as well as an unused lunar module. They can also touch a moon rock.

Motor City's art museum boasts 100 galleries spread across 658,000 square feet.

Perhaps the most striking piece of art in this LA landmark's permanent collection is "Urban Light," an installation of 202 perfectly aligned streetlights of varying styles.

In 1937 the US Congress decreed that Americans' should have an art museum in the nation's capitol. The massive collection resides in two linked buildings residing on the National Mall in Washington DC.

Mia, as it's known, contains more than 80,000 objects from around the world. Admission is free.

Located in Cooperstown, New York, the Baseball Hall of Fame honors the history of America's pastime and the greatest ballplayers ever to swing a bat.

This Los Angeles art museum spreads across two campuses. The Getty Center hosts the bulk of the collection, but the Getty Villa near Malibu contains art from ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria.

The Art Institute of Chicago is home to several iconic works of art, including "American Gothic," "Nighthawks," and "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte," the last of which was memorably featured in the film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

A cast of Auguste Rodin's famous sculpture, "The Thinker," that was damaged by a pipe bomb in 1970 stands outside this museum overlooking Cleveland's Wade Park.

This New York City landmark is the largest museum in the United States. A complete Egyptian temple and the famous "Washington Crossing the Delaware" painting are two of the biggest attractions. It was also the setting of "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler," which is a truly delightful book.