3 Best Sights in San Antonio, Texas

The first modern art museum in Texas, the McNay was once the magnificent home of artist, collector, and oil heiress Marion Koogler McNay, who bequeathed her 24-room Spanish Colonial Revival–style mansion and its 23 landscaped acres to the city of San Antonio. It currently houses an art collection of works by Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, and more, for a total of about 22,000 works. The museum also houses the Tobin Collection of Theatre Arts. Robert Tobin was a San Antonio philanthropist who assembled a world-renowned 12,000-item collection chronicling theater history. Custom tours are available for a variety of group sizes, ages, and interests.

Don't miss this magnificent global art museum right on the River Walk. Housed in the former historic Lone Star Brewery, the 69,500-square-foot museum is best known for its spectacular Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art, with thousands of works of Spanish colonial art, folk art, pre-Columbian art, and Latin American modern and contemporary art. There are also impressive collections of American Indian, African, Islamic, European, and Ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian art. An extensive collection of Asian art is housed in its own Lenora and Walter F. Brown Asian Art wing, including pieces from the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties. Past exhibitions have included works by impressionists, Matisse, sculptor and designer Harry Bertoia, Carlos Mérida, Rodin, and many more. The museum offers a variety of tours, along with classes, workshops, and special events. The SAMA museum gift shop is one of the best, brimming with accessories, home decor, gifts, art prints, jewelry, seasonal items, and books, including guides to selected collections.

This is a stunning museum that celebrates the art, history, and culture of the American West, located in a beautifully restored 1930s San Antonio Public Library building on the River Walk. The museum is named in honor of the late Texas governor Dolph Briscoe Jr. and his wife Janey Slaughter Briscoe. Highlights of the collection include a monumental bronze sculpture, John Coleman's Visions of Change, that represents both Native Americans and cowboys. Featured works include those by Frederic Remington, Allan Houser, Martin Grelle, Charles Marion Russell, W. Herbert Dunton, and more. There are 14 galleries on three levels, housing paintings, sculpture, photography, and artifacts reflecting Native American art, Spanish and Mexican colonial-era art, and Western folk art. The beautiful McNutt Sculpture Garden is free and open to the public, with access from the River Walk and an entrance on Market Street.