At a 2014 press conference covered by El Mundo, Frank Gehry proclaimed that “98 percent of everything that is built and designed today is pure shit.” He promptly apologized, citing travel fatigue, but his statement points to just how divisive architecture can be. Case in point: a surprising number of entries on click-baity lists of the world’s ugliest (or most-hated) buildings also appear on lists of the world’s most beautiful buildings. C’est kif-kif?

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Much like the works within them, museums—viewed as objects—invite opinion, though perhaps because it’s usually aesthetes forming them, those opinions tend to lean toward positivity. Lists of the most beautiful museums abound, while lists of the ugliest museums are rare. You’re more likely to encounter lists of the worst or weirdest museums, categorized thusly for their contents rather than their exteriors.

Curating a list of the most beautiful (or striking or visually interesting) museums is, frankly, tough. A true roundup would be a book-length work as there are something like 55,000 museums around the globe and architects of museums seldom shy away from the challenge of creating structures that are as interesting and alluring as the wonders they hold.

Given that, consider our list of the world’s most stunning museums not an exhaustive register but rather a starting point.

Valencia, Spain

The science and technology museum El Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe in Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences complex was designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava and opened in 2000. The institution’s futuristic and skeletal design of soaring glass and steel is often described as whalebone-like, for better or for worse, but the vast, column-free floors provide an inviting environment for exploring a broad range of scientific disciplines, including physics, biology, chemistry and space exploration in 40,000 square meters of exhibition space filled with natural light. Calatrava’s work integrates form and function, with the building itself serving as an introduction to the principles of engineering.

Shandong, China

Japanese architect Junya Ishigami told Designboom that he wanted to create a museum that was itself a “new landscape, embedding it into the Chinese environment to create the experience of walking through the lake—similarly to walking on the beach, where people can feel the essence of water.” He accomplished that goal with the Zaishui Art Museum, which not only sits ribbon-like on the water of an artificial lake near Rizhao City but also invites the water in. The museum, which hosts an evolving program of exhibitions, spans approximately 20,000 square meters—and in some sections, glazed panels lift to allow the lake to enter the exhibition spaces, creating pathways that change with the seasons.

Washington, D.C.

Designed by an architectural team made up of Sir David Adjaye, the Freelon Group, Davis Brody Bond and SmithGroupJJR, D.C.’s National Museum of African American History and Culture has a distinctive three-tiered shape inspired by the Yoruban Caryatid, a traditional West African column. The building’s bronze-colored metal lattice was chosen to pay homage to the craftsmanship of African American ironworkers who contributed so significantly to American development. In September of 2016, the institution, which is part of the Smithsonian and houses a collection that spans the arc of African American history, opened to great fanfare, and today it houses a collection of more than 36,000 significant items, including a shawl gifted by Queen Victoria to Harriet Tubman, the dress Rosa Parks was sewing before her arrest, artifacts from the slave ship São José Paquete Africa and Muhammad Ali’s boxing gloves.

Rodez, France

Dedicated to the French “painter of light,” this museum in the town of Pierre........

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