A Private Museum Worth Crossing the U.S. to Visit 🚗✨

Drove about an hour north from DC to spend a beautiful afternoon with my mom at Glenstone in Maryland. On my second day in Washington, I took my mom out of the capital—this museum had been pinned on my Google Maps for ages. Built in 2020, it won the AIA Award that year, and I’d already heard about it through architecture media buzz. Before my trip, my studio boss specifically told me, “You have to visit Glenstone!” I nodded again and again. ✅ Tickets were snapped up the moment they were released on the 1st—free, but highly sought after. On the day we visited, I checked the website again and saw that tickets were already fully booked through September! 🗓️ From the entrance, we noticed many retired seniors enjoying the space. The reception building doesn’t use the same large precast concrete panels as the main pavilion—instead, it’s clad in smaller wood panels in a similar tone. 🌳 Inside the reception area, a long bench sits beside a large window looking out onto lush greenery—a subtle nod to the “borrowed scenery” technique used in Chinese and Japanese garden temples, which also appears in certain gallery views and even the café (photos 9–10). 🪟🍵 Photos 3–5 show the path leading into the gallery. From afar, you can spot Jeff Koons’s cubist-style floral carousel—it looks small from a distance, but when we circled back toward the end, we realized how grand and vibrant it truly is! 🎠💐 Many artworks carry political metaphors, and architect Thomas Phifer collaborated closely with the artists while designing the spaces they would inhabit. 🧠🎨 The landscaping is wonderfully intricate and lush—designed by PWP, a firm known for major projects but surprisingly small, with only about 20 staff working from a single office near Berkeley’s coast. My mom got to see several of their works in one trip: from the rooftop garden of SF’s Salesforce Transit Center to the 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center, and even the landscape at One Vanderbilt near NYC’s Grand Central. Before visiting Glenstone, I watched an interview where PWP mentioned preserving the site’s original meadows, carefully selecting trees, and planning areas for future forest growth. 🌿🏞️ No photography is allowed inside the galleries, so I sketched in my little notebook. 🎨📓 Staff kindly pointed us toward the best views of the lily pond. Maybe because of its remote location, advanced ticketing, no photos, no cell service, limited visitor numbers per gallery, and one-on-one artwork explanations—all these limitations shape how people experience the space. Perhaps this is what every architect imagines as an ideal completed world. 🧘♀️ Have you visited a museum that felt like a hidden sanctuary? What was the most thoughtful design detail you’ve encountered? Share your experience below! 👇 #Glenstone #WashingtonDCArchitecture #WashingtonMuseums #ArtAndNature #PWPlandscape #ContemporaryArt #HiddenGem #MuseumDesign #ArchitectureLovers