Milwaukee Art Museum
Milwaukee, Wisc.
There's a lot of great art here, but the MAM is most famous for an unusual pavilion designed by architect Santiago Calatrava.The structure has moveable sun shades that open up during the day and resemble a giant white bird.
www.mam.org

Evergreen Aviation Museum
McMinnville, Ore.
Howard Hughes' gigantic Spruce Goose is the jewel of this collection of planes and helicopters. There's also a replica of the Wright Brothers' 1903 craft, a Corsair and an Apollo Lunar Module. A must for aerospace nerds.
www.sprucegoose.org

Ringling Museum of Art
Sarasota, Fla.
The state museum of Florida was founded by the circus guy and is home to his world-renowned collection of paintings by Peter Paul Rubens. It's housed in a flamboyant Italianate building and there's not just fine art; there's a circus museum on the grounds, too.
www.ringling.org

The Octagon Museum
Washington, D.C.
Architecture and design exhibits housed in an eccentric 19th century home. The house was a subtitute for the White House after the Brits burned Washington D.C. in 1814; President James Madison lived here for about 2 years.
www.archfoundation.org

Museum of Contemporary Art
Chicago
MCA Chicago has work by famous artists like Chuck Close, Andy Warhol and Jenny Holzer housed in a fab, architect-designed aluminum and limestone structure opened in 1996.
www.mcachicago.org

Museum of Bad Art (MOBA)
Dedham, Mass.
See hilariously bad paintings and sculpture housed in the basement of a community theater. The musuem's motto: "Art too bad to be ignored."
www.museumofbadart.org

California Surf Museum
Oceanside, Calif.
A one-room collection of tikis, surfboards, photographs and other surf culture memorabilia in the seaside community where a Hawaiian lifeguard first taught Americans to surf in 1907.
www.surfmuseum.org

Salvatore Ferragamo Shoe Museum
Florence, Italy
Ferragamo is to shoes what Ferrari is to cars: the ultimate. This museum's collection includes nearly 10,000 pairs of shoes dating from the 1920s made by the master designer. They're displayed like fine art, the pumps and wedges and platforms. You can also see the shoe forms for the feet of Ferragamo-wearing celebrities like Katharine Hepburn, Sophia Loren and Ava Gardner.
www.ferragamo.com

International Spy Museum
Washington, D.C.
The history of spying, the world's second oldest professional, is chronicled in exhibits of real-life spy gear that could have come from a James Bond movie. Like the pistol disguised to look like a lipstick tube. There's also a replica of a tunnel that ran between East and West Berlin during the Cold War, exhibits on spy history, secret codes and disguises. Too much fun.
www.spymuseum.org

Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Studio-House Museum
Mexico City
See artist Diego Rivera's work and personal belongings in the 1930s era residence he shared with his wife, artist Frida Kahlo. The museum consists of two houses connected by a second-floor bridge; Rivera lived in one and Frida lived in the other. It's an architectural illustration of the independence they maintained in their unconventional marriage.
Address: Diego Rivera 2, San Angel, Mexico City; Telephone: 55/5616-0996