Housing a jaw-dropping collection of self-taught (or 'outsider' art), American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM) is a celebration of unbridled creativity utterly free of arts-scene pretension.
Across two buildings and two sculpture parks, you'll find broken-mirror collages, homemade robots and flying apparatuses, elaborate sculptural works made of needlepoint, and gigantic model ships painstakingly created from matchsticks. The whimsical automatons in the Cabaret Mechanical Theater are worth a closer look. And don't miss the famous Flatulence Post and its, er, 'fart art' in the Basement Gallery.
Leave time to explore the gift store (reportedly described by filmmaker John Waters as “the best museum gift shop you’ve ever been to in your life”) to pick up a souvenir.