St. Louis Art Museum

The St. Louis Art Museum in Forest Park is one of the premier encyclopedic art museums in the United States, housing a permanent collection of more than 34,000 works spanning 5,000 years of art history from ancient Egypt to contemporary American practice. The museum occupies a Beaux-Arts Palace of Fine Arts building constructed as the Fine Arts pavilion for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition — the building itself is a National Historic Landmark — supplemented by a major 2013 east wing expansion by architect David Chipperfield that added 200,000 square feet of gallery, storage, and conservation space. The permanent collection's strongest holdings include German Expressionist paintings, American modernist works, pre-Columbian art and artifacts, ancient Egyptian and Nubian collections, Asian decorative arts, and an outstanding collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist European paintings. The German Expressionist gallery is considered one of the finest in the Western Hemisphere outside of Germany, with major works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, and George Grosz. The museum's prints and drawings collection, displayed on rotating basis, contains works by Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, and Francisco Goya. Most of the permanent collection is permanently free to view, making this one of the best-value cultural institutions in Missouri. Friday evenings, when the museum is open until 9pm, draw a post-work crowd that gives the galleries an unusually lively atmosphere compared to typical museum midweek mornings. The museum restaurant, Café Osage, and the outdoor terrace overlook Forest Park's Great Basin reflecting pool, providing a pleasant lunch and afternoon stop.