Fall for Museums

When poet Andrew Marvell wrote "Had we but world enough, and time," as a tribute to the pulchritude of His Coy Mistress, he could hardly have imagined the shrinking globe of today. Though the world is getting smaller, the opportunity for arts to expand those horizons is growing. If you're like me, you wish for nothing so much as time enough to trot across the country with abandon (and a pocket full of admission tickets) to experience beauty, form, function, and diversity on a tour of the best exhibits U.S. museums have to offer this fall.

To that end, here is an itinerary of must-see art and architecture. At the very least, get to the ones close to home, but if you find yourself on the road with time on your hands, the price of admission is the only thing standing between you and a vast sea of mind- and eye-opening proportions.

Begin on the West Coast. The otherworldly atmosphere of Hollywood is decidedly appropriate for an exhibit of that truly idiosyncratic, outspoken Surrealist, Salvador Dalí. Painting & Film at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an exploration of the cinematic quality of his work both on and off camera. This is a superb chance to see the iconic dripping clocks in The Persistence of Memory interspersed with six cameras looping celebrated films such as Un chien andalou – made with fellow Surrealist Luis Bunuel – and Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound. Photographs, sculpture, and text round out this well-edited presentation of the oeuvre of a man who created some of the most disturbing and intellectually challenging images in modern memory.

A feast for the eyes becomes music to the ears with a jaunt north to San Francisco for a thorough exploration of one of music's more eclectic instruments. The Evolution of the 'Ukulele at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art covers the entire history of the "Jumping Flea" from its original introduction to Honolulu in 1879 by a small band of Portuguese immigrants to the height of its popularity in the 1950s. And if the exhibit puts you in the mood to "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" you're in luck. The first-ever 'Uke Festival, kicked off by the "Jimi Hendrix of the 'Ukulele," Hawaiian Jake Shimabukuro, will take place over two days at the Herbst Theater and Yerba Buena Gardens.

The works of Lalique, Tiffany, Wright, and other acclaimed artists create a context for another sort of historical exploration, this one into the world of glass. Exhibited at Seattle's Museum of Glass, Contrasts: A Glass Primer is presented as a compelling introduction to the shimmering medium. Over 50 works by international artists, including Seattle's own Dale Chihuly, are grouped and labeled to illustrate opposing ideals. For instance, the coiling Medusa-like tubes of Chihuly marked FLUID are placed next to an abruptly angular sculpture by Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová labeled RIGID. Guaranteed to change the way you look at art of any kind.

The women connected with photographer Alfred Stieglitz were forward-thinking modernists that included Gertrude Kasebier, Pamela Coleman Smith, Anne Brigman, Katharine Rhoades and the inimitable Georgia O'Keeffe. Starting September 21, Georgia O'Keeffe and the Women of the Stieglitz Circle will be exhibited at the modest yet quietly stunning Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. The landscape that inspired much of O'Keeffe's work is probably the best place to see it and this show presents it in a fresh context. Juxtaposed with pieces from her contemporaries, the works proved that women's creativity was not only equal to that of men's, but a powerful medium to illustrate the struggle for recognition.

The women artists of the early 20th century were just one group in a long line of mavericks. Others from a more recent era are showcased in the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago's Sympathy for the Devil.  Rather than capitalize on the good vibrations of the Whitney's recent Summer of Love, this exhibit brings together the raw and edgy results of the punk era's collision with art in the late 70s and 80s. In a true multimedia extravaganza, drawings and paintings are displayed side-by-side with works such as Douglas Gordon's bootlegged concert footage, slowed to a barely perceptible speed and visually flung onto fourteen-foot walls. Visitors can also step into a Plexiglass studio and record their own voices, or simply listen to a soundtrack on the iPod nanos provided. Live performances are scheduled too.

Speaking of groundbreaking events, it wasn't so long ago that the first shovel full of earth was turned for the new building at the Akron Art Museum in Ohio. The campus includes a late 19th-century brick and limestone building and the innovative, winged glass and steel structure designed to embrace and shelter its predecessor. It's fitting, then, that this is the location for a collection of work by an artist who captured the collective heart of the country and documented the turn of events for over sixty years. American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell features hundreds of examples of illustrations from war bond posters to haunting images of the Civil Rights Movement.

If Rockwell captured our hearts, international espionage has long held our imagination in thrall. The outstanding permanent collection at the Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. reveals more than the methods behind some of the world's most famous secret operatives. But as you'll discover here, history (and film and literature) is crammed with characters once considered above suspicion, some as surprising as Moses and George Washington. Learn this and more, beginning at the Introduction to Espionage and proceeding (with caution) through School for Spies, Secret History of History, and Spies Among Us. You may never look at the world, or the people in it, the same way again. Special programs – such as scavenger hunts and KidSpy Operation Secret Slumber – offer those who just can't get enough plenty of opportunities to try their hands and minds at some ingenious deceptions.

There is nothing to hide at Baltimore's American Visionary Art Museum. From the eye-popping 55-foot whirligig, the jewel in the crown of their outdoor sculpture garden, to the interior of the elliptical main building, the galleries here are devoted to the work of self-taught artists. Innovation, optimism, dreams fueled by imagination, and the pioneer spirit are all intimately revealed in changing exhibits that focus on specific themes. Also inside, the graceful staircase and balustrade themselves are sculptures worthy of examination.

The Storm King Art Center, just an hour outside of New York City in Mountainville (in the Hudson Highlands), celebrates visionary art of a slightly different sort. Here, nature and landscape are as much a part of the experience as the art itself. Five hundred acres of fields, woodlands, and grassy lawns are galleries for sculpture by a bevy of internationally recognized contemporary artists. Though the massive pieces are permanently placed, these displays without walls are transitory. Rain, sun, and the passage of seasons mark dramatic changes that ensure repeat visits are as unique as the first.

New York City's own Central Park and fabled skyline provide the backdrop for Frank Stella On the Roof at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden. Three sculptures, each constructed in steel and carbon fiber, represent the abstract expressionist's evolution from painting to freestanding art and architecture. As they push out and up, asserting their mass and bulk while at the same time twisting airily into the sky, they capture small vignettes of the city framed within their angles and curves.