The most unusual museums in Boston

Just a block from either of Boston’s storied art institutions on Huntington Avenue, The MassArt Art Museum is a hidden gem for modern art that’s free to check out. Comprising two moderately-sized galleries, MAAM opened in 2020 and has made contemporary art more accessible in Boston than ever before. Like you’d find at the city’s renowned Institute for Contemporary Art a few miles away in the Seaport, avant-garde exhibitions of global, national and local artists are MAAM’s mission. Did we mention it’s always free? 

In the 1800s, thanks to its access to hydropower, Waltham became the center for Boston’s industrial revolution. This charming museum, set in the Francis Cabot Lowell Mill, adjacent to the Charles River, honors the city’s place as a continued hotspot for inventors and innovators. From Cabot Lowell’s Boston Manufacturing Company’s textiles to the Metz motorcar, the museum’s artifacts are set in wondrous permanent exhibits in an original red brick mill building. Each spring, the museum plays a large part in The Watch City Steampunk Festival, which riotously celebrates the Victorian steam-driven era with museum events and a street festival.

A local institution since the 1990s, the Museum of Bad Art is dedicated to showing off the worst works of art around. Though it took a hit during the pandemic and had to temporarily close its doors, it reopend at Dorchester Brewing Company in 2022. This once-hidden wonder now adorns the walls of the taproom, gameroom, stairwell and even the exterior of a walk-in refrigerator at the in-house kitchen, M&M BBQ, with fantastic art fails for folks to appreciate. With a permanent collection of more than 900 pieces, the non-profit stewards of the Museum of Bad Art display about 60 works at DBCo. at any given moment. Open whenever the taproom is pouring pints, this museum gives everyone the opportunity to cherish its selection of subpar oeuvres.

This hidden-gem museum on Beacon Street is worth touring. The 1859 rowhouse is a veritable time capsule of what life was like in Boston from the mid-19th to early-20th centuries, preserved by three generations of the Gibson family. You’ll step into period rooms with antique furniture, not to mention an original kitchen and pantry. Reserve tickets for a general tour, or choose from a list of specialty tours if you want to learn about a new aspect of the house and its inhabitants. And for a bonus fun fact: Part of Greta Gerwig’s Little Women was filmed here.

Tucked off Staniford Street in West End Place, this wonderful niche museum pays homage to one of Boston’s almost forgotten neighborhoods: the West End. Bordered by Beacon Hill and the North End, the West End—notably the birthplace of Star Trek actor the late Leonard Nimoy—was mostly razed in the mid-20th century to make way for high-rise condos and government buildings, including the notoriously brutalist City Hall complex. More recent developments have put the area back on the map and, fortunately, the museum’s founders saved artifacts and stories, which are displayed in permanent exhibits as well as three revolving shows each year. There are also lots of fun events, including West End walking tours.

This museum might be small, but where else in Boston boasts the very door behind which the great novelist and social commentator Charles Dickens once slept? The Omni Parker House claims to be the oldest continuously operating hotel in the United States; though most of what you see is a 1927 renovation, the hotel indeed hasn’t closed since Harvey D. Parker founded it in 1855. The museum displays artifacts from its considerable history, including the door to the room Dickens slept in. Other guests such as Mark Twain and the Kennedy family are noted—John F. Kennedy proposed to Jackie in the dining room and announced his run for presidency here in the early 1960s. The hotel’s staff famously included Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh. On a sweeter note, Boston cream pie was invented here and you can pick one up from the gift shop on the way out.

For all its industry and innovation, Waltham is officially known as The Watch City—the city seal bears the image of the Waltham Watch Company’s factory. The Waltham Watch Company was the first American manufacturer to use assembly line mass-production techniques for making timepieces, thus creating more and less expensive watches and, most importantly, the most accurate clocks and watches in the world at that time. Now posh loft apartments and offices, the Waltham Watch Company’s three, large turreted red brick buildings on Crescent Street house a permanent exhibit of instruments, timepieces, advertising posters, and photographs of the WWC workers who made industrial history here.

Just feet away from the spectacular cantilevered Institute of Contemporary Art in the Seaport District, the Society of Arts and Crafts stands two floors up on the corner of Seaport Boulevard. This free museum is dedicated to the art of design and skilled craftsmanship in everyday living. The museum is rooted in the American Arts and Crafts movement of the early 20th century and this collection includes ceramics, textiles, metal and wood work, and glass art. The gift shop is filled with stunningly covetable stuff to take home.