Best underappreciated museum
The staid and stately Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has been the grande dame of Boston's art world for more than a century. It doesn't have the expanse of the MFA or the streamlined modern might of the ICA, and as a result sometimes can be forgotten in Boston's museum mix. But that's not because it's unworthy of notice. Indeed, three floors of galleries surround an always-blooming courtyard, and more than 2500 works of art - including paintings, sculpture, furniture, and tapestries - span 30 centuries. You'll find works by Rembrandt, Titian, and Degas, and the courtyard changes with the seasons. Besides the exhibitions, live classical and jazz music tumbles around the halls on a weekly basis. Biggest doesn't mean best, and neither does newest. The Gardner is an indispensable, if overlooked, mainstay of Boston's museums, and thus our readers give it the credit it deserves.

When science climbs into bed with art, the resulting hybrid often suggests the pairing was not incestuous. Such is the case at the MIT Museum, which our readers flag as an art house that deserves more notice. You don't hear "Press this" at the MFA, nor do you jump in the air and freeze your shadow on the wall at the Gardner Museum. So often, museums take on this sacred-space vibe: don't touch, don't talk, don't enjoy. Not so at the MIT Museum, where visitors are encouraged to play, and to take as much delight in the science and technology as the math-minded experimenters do. With exhibits in holography, photomicrography, stroboscopy, photography, architecture, computing, and nautical engineering, this museum proves that art and science make good bedfellows.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 280 The Fenway, Boston, (617) 566-1401, www.gardnermuseum.org; MIT Museum, 265 Mass Ave, Cambridge, (617) 253-4444, web.mit.edu/museum.