Top 126 Coolest Art Installations in the U.S. [2025 Survey]

We surveyed art lovers across the U.S. to find out which lesser-known installations, sculpture parks, and downright bizarre public art displays they would most like to visit this year.

The results were surprising and very revealing about what people value in their cultural detours.

Key Findings:

Hawaii showed up twice, and both times with wildly different entries.

Honolulu's Kakaʻako mural scene drew love for its sheer scale and international flavor, but the Big Island's Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau wooden carvings showed a deeper pull - people are craving experiences where art is sacred, rooted, and inseparable from place.

Hawaii seems to have cracked the code: beauty meets meaning, and it's photogenic too.

Florida's Coral Castle and Whimzeyland are both pure Florida: weird, personal, and slightly magical.

There's a trend here - Floridians (and Florida-curious travelers) don't want polished. They want eccentric.

Art that was built by hand, and maybe in the middle of the night.

North Carolina came up three times, suggesting the state has quietly become a sculpture powerhouse.

From the natural wonder of Cloud Chamber in Raleigh to the bold, urban Magic Carpet Murals in Charlotte and the kinetic chaos of Vollis Simpson's Whirligigs in Wilson, North Carolina's art is wildly varied but consistently grounded in local identity.

Rural, urban, and everything between.

Montana is punching above its weight.

With three entries - Bleu Horses, Garden of One Thousand Buddhas, and Sculpture in the Wild - it's clear people associate the state with big skies and big artistic ambition.

Folk spirituality and rugged beauty seem to meet in Montana in a way that's deeply compelling to travelers.

New York made the list more than any other state, but not because of Manhattan.

Brooklyn and Queens landed the entries (Pratt and Socrates Sculpture Park), while upstate's Opus 40 in Saugerties is getting attention for its meditative, monolithic energy.

The art crowd is happy to skip MoMA in favor of a sculpture you might accidentally trip over during a hike.

Alaska quietly owns the "spiritual minimalism" category.

Between the whale bone arch in Utqiaġvik and the ethereal "Seed Lab" installation in Anchorage, Alaska's most loved pieces are stripped-down, elemental, and tied to land and tradition.

They don't need neon - they've got ice, history, and silence.

Texas offers two wildly different sides of art - and neither is what you'd expect.

In Austin, the Cathedral of Junk is exactly what it sounds like (and that's the point).

But in Houston, Monument Au Fantóme brings bold European surrealism to the American South. Together, they say: we have range. And a lot of space.

South Dakota landed three entries, making it one of the most sculpture-saturated states per capita.

Between the Arc of Dreams in Sioux Falls, the dreamlike Dignity statue on the Missouri River, and the wonderfully weird Porter Sculpture Park, this state is quietly doubling down on roadside grandeur.

Some states really like their food-themed art.

Maine's Wild Blueberry Land, New Jersey's Lucy the Elephant (technically a building), and Kansas' Grassroots Art Center offerings all show that edible art isn't just cute - it's a vibe. And people are here for it.

A surprising number of respondents were drawn to art that's interactive, strange, or both.

Whether it's walking inside the Cloud Chamber, playing music at the Music Box Village, or stumbling through the Doll's Head Trail in Georgia, the throughline is clear: people want to do, not just see.

Final Thoughts

Our survey makes one thing clear: when it comes to public art, Americans are less interested in pristine sculpture gardens and more drawn to places where art feels alive, improvised, or deeply connected to the land it inhabits.

From bottle chapels and whirligigs to cornfields and camera obscuras, we're witnessing a quiet shift away from gallery walls and toward art that invites wonder, confusion, or even a little participation.

Methodology

Online panel survey of 3,002 respondents based on age, gender, and geography. Internal data sources are used to obtain population data sets. We used a two-step process to ensure representativeness through stratified sampling and post-stratification weighting.

Respondents are carefully chosen from a geographically representative online panel of double opt-in members. This selection is further tailored to meet the precise criteria required for each unique survey. Throughout the survey, we design questions to carefully screen and authenticate respondents, guaranteeing the alignment of the survey with the ideal participants.

To ensure the integrity of our data collection, we employ an array of data quality methods. Alongside conventional measures like digital fingerprinting, bot checks, geo-verification, and speeding detection, etc. each response undergoes a thorough review by a dedicated team member to ensure quality and contextual accuracy. Our commitment extends to open-ended responses, subjecting them to scrutiny for gibberish answers and plagiarism detection.