17 Best Museums in Boston

"Nerdy in the best way possible, this museum devoted to STEAM—science, technology, engineering, art, and math, i.e., MIT’s bread and butter—lets you geek out with a whole bunch of hands-on, interactive exhibits that seek to make the theoretical practical and the highly conceptual understandable. In the fall of 2022, the fifty-year-old institution moved into a brand-new, purpose-built space in the heart of the university’s Kendall Square campus in Cambridge, just across the Charles River from Boston proper. It now tempts visitors with a whopping 56,000 square feet of super-engaging, beautifully designed space over three floors, its galleries displaying permanent and temporary exhibitions on subjects ranging from AI to kinetic sculpture, Moon landings to Minecraft, solar-powered cars to architecture, and genetic engineering to photography. There’s also a mostly kid-facing maker space on hand, with activities and constructions facilitated by museum educators, plus a monthly series of “After Dark” evening events for the twenty-one-and-over crowd." - Elizabeth Wellington, Andrew Sessa