Great U.S. Museums for a Date

Get An Education While You’re Dating!

Eventually in your dating life you?ll need fresh ideas. During the first couple months of dating, you?ve already done movies, concerts, putt-putt golf, state fairs, winery tours, walks on the beach and even monster truck rallies. Now it?s time to throw museums into your bag of ideas.

I know, I know. Museums are in a weird hinterland of dating ideas between the intimacy and silence of a movie and the verbal interactions of getting to know one another while drinking wine or eating fried Twinkies. They?re so quiet and there are all of the placards explaining the exhibits and docents taking you on tours that you might end up standing beside each other awkwardly as both of your minds wander and wonder how much Van Gogh tripped.

However, there are museums that are exceptions. Now, obviously I can?t list all of the cool date museums that are out there. Yes, this list also has a bit of a Los Angeles bias. But, in this list you?ll find one major thing in common: the chance to get outside and just talk for a little bit.

The Huntington. In one of the most interesting conglomerations of information, The Huntington combines a research library with an art collection and botanical gardens. The art collection contains a vast array of British portraiture art and samples from the library include a Gutenberg Bible and the First Folio of Shakespeare. Surround those collections with one hundred and twenty acres of botanical gardens and you can slip into one of the buildings, enjoy the exhibits and sneak right back out to discuss and enjoy the Southern California sunshine.

The Getty. The Getty Museum in Los Angeles has a much broader selection of art in several different buildings, each devoted to a different style, era or exhibition. Once you and your date finish looking around a building, the Getty Gardens are a perfect place to just sit and look out toward the ocean. If you grab a sandwich from their snack bar, it?s kind of like a picnic in between museum visits.

Hearst Castle. Part of the magic of Hearst Castle is the drive up the Pacific Coast Highway to get there. It?s easy to see why William Randolph Hearst chose this location to build his ninety thousand square foot estate. In between all of the various tours of the architecture, art and gardens, there?s also time to just explore on your own and pretend like you?re getting ready to attend one of the magnificent parties that used to occur there.

The Smithsonian Museums. Let?s say you decide that the Natural History Museum is the part of the Smithsonian that you want to explore on this date. After an hour and the realization that there is so much more to see in this museum, let alone the many other museums that surround The National Mall, you can just poke your heads back out, find a seat and just enjoy the sight of the Washington Monument to your west and the U.S. Capitol to the east as you try to absorb all of the beauty that surrounds you.

So, mix in a museum, but be sure that you can take a little time to just hang with each other while you do it. You may not have the Pacific Ocean or The National Mall, but you may have Forest Park, Central Park, Loose Park, Grant Park, City Park??