Sheldon Museum of Art

The Sheldon Museum of Art on the University of Nebraska campus is better than most visitors expect, with a permanent collection running to roughly 12,000 objects, strong in American paintings, sculpture, and works on paper from the twentieth century. The building by Philip Johnson is architecturally significant in its own right — cool, formal, and beautifully proportioned, it provides a serene setting for the collection.

The museum is free and open to the public, which means it is largely overlooked by travelers passing through the city. That is a mistake. If you have any interest in mid-century American art — Hopper, O'Keeffe, Diebenkorn, de Kooning — the Sheldon has genuine depth. The sculpture garden outside is also worth a walk. Check the website for current exhibition hours, as they vary by day.

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The building itself, designed by Philip Johnson and completed in 1963, is considered one of his finest works — a serene travertine box with a classical colonnade that Johnson described as a "temple of art." The collection it holds, assembled largely through gifts, includes one of the strongest concentrations of twentieth-century American art in the Great Plains, with particular depth in abstract expressionism.