What’s your favourite place to visit for inspiration? With so many incredible, world-class gallery experiences to choose from, we thought we'd share some of the places we've been lucky enough to visit at Design Clarity.
These are places that possess the rare power to inspire, disrupt, and delight—spaces we hope to keep visiting again and again. Because our team couldn’t agree on one singular, absolute favourite, we have woven these ten spectacular venues together with no particular priority. Let’s not stop at ten, and don’t let the ordering prejudice your travel plans. Visit them all!
When searching for a space that challenges human perception and bridges the gap between science and visual narrative, the Wellcome Collection in London stands out as a profound source of inspiration. This free museum and library explores the connections between medicine, life, and art, blending historical medical artifacts with contemporary artistic installations to prompt deep consideration of human vulnerability. Moving from the clinical and analytical to the intentionally provocative, the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) deep in Tasmania serves as a massive, subversive shock to the cultural system. Carved directly into the subterranean sandstone cliffs of the Derwent River, MONA completely rejects traditional museum labels and curated hand-holding, inviting visitors into a dark, labyrinthine space packed with contemporary art and ancient antiquities that force a raw emotional response.
For those drawn to structural genius, Frank Gehry’s iconic Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain completely transformed the global landscape of modern architecture. Its fluid, organic curves made of titanium, limestone, and glass resemble a futuristic ship docked along the Nervión River, creating a venue that is just as inspiring as the world-class modern masterpieces held within its monumental galleries. A different kind of harmony between form and environment can be experienced at the Hakone Open-Air Museum, nestled in the scenic, volcanic hills of Japan. This expansive space masterfully creates a dialogue between world-class art and natural beauty, featuring over 100 outdoor sculptures by modern masters across lush green gardens where three-dimensional forms shift, interact, and evolve under changing weather conditions, seasons, and natural light.
The intersection of technology and spatial design reaches its peak at teamLab Planets Tokyo, an unparalleled, body-immersive museum concept where visitors step barefoot into a series of massive digital art spaces. Through projections, mirrors, water features, and responsive technology, the installations shift in real-time based on human interaction, offering a masterclass in sensory design where boundaries between the self and the artwork completely dissolve. Just a short journey away in Tokyo’s Roppongi district, 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT offers a more grounded but equally innovative approach, functioning as a research hub created by Japan’s design giants to closely examine everyday objects and systems. Housed in a striking concrete building designed by Tadao Ando, it transforms ordinary things into extraordinary design exhibitions that challenge how we view the utility of the world around us.
Travelling to Europe’s coastlines reveals the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, widely considered a perfect marriage of art, modernist architecture, and landscape. Low, glass-walled corridors twist through a beautiful sculpture park overlooking the sea toward Sweden, creating a calm, contemplative atmosphere where the natural world outside acts as a living frame for the legendary international modern art exhibitions hosted inside. This serene, coastal aesthetic contrasts sharply with the vibrant urban modernism found at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in the beating heart of Manhattan. As a definitive pillar of the global art world, MoMA offers a comprehensive, multi-level education on how human creativity, industrial design, architecture, and visual culture have evolved over the last two centuries, placing historic masterpieces alongside cutting-edge electronic media.
Further uptown, New York City boasts another architectural landmark with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Frank Lloyd Wright’s final and most celebrated masterpiece. The building’s inverted, continuous spiral ramp completely rewrote the rules of traditional museum layouts, allowing visitors to slowly stroll downward along a gentle incline while viewing modern and contemporary art from ever-shifting angles under a sun-drenched central atrium. Finally, bringing this global journey into the modern era of sustainable architecture, the Sydney Modern Project represents a spectacular, light-filled expansion of the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Australia. Designed by SANAA, this new public campus features glass pavilions stepping down toward Sydney Harbour, a dedicated gallery for Aboriginal art, and a vast underground contemporary art space built inside a decommissioned WWII naval oil tank, setting a new global benchmark for structural innovation.
