Which Art Sites Made Time Magazine’s Greatest Places 2024?

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Time magazine has released a new list of 100 ‘extraordinary destinations’.

The list is broken down into two categories: places to stay and places to visit—including art museums.

Places were evaluated on criteria ‘including relevance, impact, innovation, and success,’ with a clear preference for recently opened, renovated, or expanded locations.

Listed places Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Manchester’s Aviva Studios (home of Factory International), South Carolina’s International African American Museum, and Tokyo‘s teamLab Borderless (pictured top) all featured in our article on the most anticipated museum openings of 2023.

Another great place, Kunstsilo in Kristiansand, Norway, made our list for 2024. Constructed to house grain in 1934, the museum opened on 11 May with a strong collection of Nordic Modernist art. Works by ceramics artists Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto will feature in a new exhibition from 27 September 2024 to 3 March 2025.

The EDP Art Reef, a submarine project led by Portuguese street artist Vhils also made the list, as did Grootbos Florilegium, which features nearly 250 illustrations of flowers and insects on a South African nature reserve.

Berlin’s thatch-roofed Reethaus, which describes itself as ‘a modern temple with world-class sound technology’, hosted a live performance of the score to Nan Goldin‘s 2022 documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed shortly after launching in September 2023.

Mexico City’s Olivia Foundation is an art museum that opened on 7 February 2024. Named after one of founders Jana and Guillermo González’s eight dogs, its collection favours women artists such as Helen Frankenthaler, Ruth Asawa, Jadé Fadojutimi, Sophia Loeb.

One of the stranger inclusions is Aranya, a real estate development on an unremarkable beach in China’s Beidaihe district that’s home to art warren UCCA Dune. When I spoke to him in 2018, UCCA director Philip Tinari described the area as like a less organically-developed Jersey Shore.

The greatness of Time‘s great places should be taken with a breath of salt air. In addition to nominations from its network of contributors, Time sought submissions through a paid application process, with fees ranging from U.S. $295 to $595.

Time did not immediately respond to an email asking which places were suggested by their contributors and which came via paid applications. —[O]

Main image: teamLab Borderless Azubaidai Hills in Tokyo. Courtesy teamLab.