100 art-world Instagram accounts to follow right now: Museums and Galleries
You already follow The Met, MoMA and Tate Modern, of course, but what about quality feeds from other galleries, museums and institutions? Find out more in the final instalment of our updated hottest 100 Instagram accounts you might not know about
Located in a small town 22 miles outside of Copenhagen, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art houses an enviable collection of post-war art in a striking example of mid-century Danish architecture. The glass corridors that connect the galleries embrace its scenic outdoor location, and it has been listed in the book 1,000 Places To See Before You Die. The Instagram account shares works from the collection and exhibitions, as well as photographs uploaded by visitors using its handle.
Every day this Oxford institution shares a single art-history lesson, focusing on one object from a world-renowned collection that spans 5,000 years of culture. Expect everything from Islamic metalwork to ancient Greek vases, Rembrandt etchings to paintings by contemporary artists such as Flora Yukhnovich, who is currently preparing for a show at the museum in 2023.
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National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway
@nasjonalmuseet
Oslo’s new national museum reopened in 2022 after a $670-million refurbishment. It holds roughly 400,000 works, spanning art, architecture, design and decorative arts, including its most famous masterpiece, Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893). Go behind the scenes with the museum’s curators and restorers on Instagram as they explore the collection.
Owned by the gambling millionaire David Walsh, Mona (Museum of Old and New Art) also hosts a festival called Mofo, and a hotel called Homo. A$75,000 also gets you eternal membership and space for your ashes in an urn in the gallery. Its Instagram account is unorthodox and entertaining in equal measure — look out for the absorbing Cloaca Professional apparatus by Wim Delvoye.
Zeitz MOCAA opened in a converted grain silo on Cape Town’s waterfront in 2017 and is the world’s largest museum dedicated to contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora. The core of its collection is lent by Jochen Zeitz, the President and CEO of Harley Davidson, and includes works by the likes of Chris Ofili, Kehinde Wiley and Julie Mehretu. Instagram is great for catching up on the museum’s busy schedule of public lectures, workshops and webinars.
Funded by the real-estate developer who built the surrounding Tokyo district of Roppongi Hills, the Mori Art Museum hosts regular exhibitions of artists from Japan as well as from the West — such as Oscar Murillo and Camille Henrot — covering contemporary art, fashion, design, photography and video. On Instagram, the museum regularly uploads curator-led tours of its shows in both English and Japanese — ideal for armchair travelling.
France’s national museum of the Middle Ages reopened in May 2022 after a seven-year renovation project. It has a restored 15th-century chapel and the ruins of ancient Roman thermal baths in its grounds. A new route leads visitors from the museum’s collection of Byzantine art, past stained-glass windows and tapestries, to the birth of Gothic art. Its Instagram is particularly filled with manuscript illuminations, often brought to life through charming animation.
Hong Kong’s long-awaited M+ museum of visual culture opened on the southern tip of the Kowloon peninsula with a huge exhibition of works by Antony Gormley in November 2021 — a quarter of a century after its conception. It bolstered the artistic reputation of the city, which has also seen a recent influx of blue-chip galleries and a satellite edition of Art Basel. The museum posts once a day, mostly highlighting future shows, workshops and fellowships.
Encompassing the new National Museum of Qatar, the 3-2-1 Qatar Olympic and Sports Museum and MATHAF: Arab Museum of Modern Art — as well as a number of public art commissions and heritage sites — the Qatar Museums’ Instagram provides everything you need to know about culture in the Gulf state. Recent highlights include an exhibition of work by the late fashion designer Virgil Abloh, the first solo show by Jeff Koons in the region, and updates on archaeological excavations around Doha’s old town.
The social media team at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection must be one of the busiest in the industry. Every Monday they share an inspiring quote from an artist such as Georgia O’Keeffe or Damien Hirst, while in between they upload trivia games, post behind-the-scenes films of exhibitions being installed, and run a photography competition that encourages visitors to hashtag their best shots of the museum’s waterfront palazzo.
For more than 100 years the Church of San Lorenzo in Venice had been largely closed to the public. Then, in 2019, it reopened as Ocean Space, a permanent pavilion dedicated to the world of water. It’s run by TBA21, a contemporary art foundation established by the collector Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza. The focus is on unconventional, multi-disciplinary projects, and the space has become a centre for exhibitions, research and programmes that educate the public about the importance of safeguarding our oceans.
Perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego reopened in April 2022 after a $105 million renovation, with the promise of ‘art with a view’. The museum’s impressive holdings total around 5,500 works — almost as many as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art — but the reinstalled displays now have a particular West Coast perspective, with a focus on women, Chicano and Latino artists. The MCASD also has important works by Christo and Jean-Claude and Robert Irwin — in 1997 the latter cut four holes in one of the museum’s windows for a site-specific work that allows visitors to feel the ocean breeze.
Under the leadership of director and chief curator Cecilia Alemani, New York’s High Line — a public art programme on an elevated former railway track in Manhattan — has achieved huge success. Among other things, the non-profit organisation (which is largely run on donations) commissions outdoor sculptures, screens films and stages dances. Indeed, it was so popular that Alemani was asked to act as curator and artistic director for the 2022 Venice Biennale.
In May 2021, after a $195-million renovation, Paris’s former corn exchange opened as a new home for the collection of François Pinault. The building was refashioned into a state-of-the-art gallery complex, complete with bookshop and restaurant, by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando, who inserted a 29-metre-wide concrete cylinder into the middle of the building to a create a new and dynamic space. Some of the artists it has focused on since include Charles Ray, Bertrand Lavier, Roni Horn and Felix Gonzalez-Torres.
Founded in Mexico City in 2013 by the fruit-juice heir Eugenio López Alonso, the Museo Jumex has held exhibitions of work by artists including Urs Fischer, Andy Warhol and James Turrell, as well as several shows dedicated to art addressing the ongoing climate crisis. The building — the first Latin American project by David Chipperfield Architects — was designed to be both a gallery and a laboratory for experimentation and innovation in the arts.
Located on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, The Broad opened in 2015 as a gallery to house the trove of modern art belonging to mega-collectors Eli and Edythe Broad. It contains almost 2,000 works by artists such as Ed Ruscha, Roy Lichtenstein and Yayoi Kusama, as well as the single biggest holding of Cindy Sherman pieces — numbering some 129. On Instagram, The Broad highlights new acquisitions, celebrates artists’ birthdays and — for those wanting a career change — regularly posts job openings.
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The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, England
@courtauld
As one of the most important art-historical institutions in the world, the Courtauld has amassed a stellar collection — most notably Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings by artists including Van Gogh, Manet and Cézanne. The gallery reopened in the autumn of 2021 after a three-year refurbishment, providing its masterpieces with a brilliant new home. On Instagram, it serves up mini art-history lectures focused on its collection.
Located in a 5,000-acre botanical garden in the Brazilian rainforest, the Inhotim Institute has become one of South America’s most important centres for domestic and international contemporary art. Its Instagram features works of art surrounded by lush vegetation and under azure skies sure to brighten your feed.
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Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL), Marrakech, Morocco
@macaal_
The non-profit gallery MACAAL in Marrakech hosts regular exhibitions that promote the work of artists from Morocco and its neighbouring countries. It also offers training and workshop facilities for local artists, as well as a platform for promotion on an international scale. One recent exhibition highlight was a show of work by underground artists from the nearby surfing destination, Essaouira.
Over the course of its 256-year history, Christie’s has grown to become respected across the globe for its take on all things art. Our Instagram feed, which has over one million followers, highlights upcoming auctions as well as collecting guides, exhibition highlights, interviews and news.