National Infantry Museum awarded top honors — again — in USA Today rankings

The votes are in and the National Infantry Museum is still the best free museum in the country, according to USA Today.

Beginning in mid-April, national travel experts with USA Today nominated 20 museums in a variety of categories. Votes could be cast each day for one month.

At the end, the NIM was named the victor in two categories: Best Free Museum and Best History Museum. The museum previously won first place in the Best Free Museum category in 2016 and 2020.

While no prizes are awarded, the bragging rights are extremely valuable for the nonprofit museum that hasn’t been open to the public since March 2020, National Infantry Museum Foundation President Pete Jones said in a news release.

“What that means is that the museum has made such an impression on the millions of people who have visited it that it stays top of mind, even when a visit is impossible,” Jones said.

Since opening in 2009, the NIM, often called “the Smithsonian of the Army,” has won a global award from the Themed Entertainment Industry, been included in a CNN Travel article about the 12 best military museums in the world and is consistently ranked as one of the state’s top attractions on TripAdvisor.

The NIM is a free museum with immersive exhibits that take visitors through a 240-year history lesson of what it means to be a United States soldier. It preserves and displays one of the largest collections of military artifacts in the world, with 190,000 square feet of galleries standing on a 200-acre tract outside of Fort Benning.

As a non-profit, the NIM relies solely on donations, memberships and sponsorship to sustain its exhibits and galleries. Anyone can donate online.

Here are some of the other museums that the NIM bested:

Best History Museum

1. National Infantry Museum & Soldier Center in Columbus, Ga.
2. National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.
3. National Museum of the Marine Corps in Prince William County, Va.
4. The Mob Museum in Las Vegas, Nev.
5. USS Constitution Museum in Boston, Mass.
6. Museum of History & Industry in Seattle, Wash.
7. Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia, Penn.
8. National WWII Museum in New Orleans, La.
9. Museum of Native American History in Bentonville, Ark.
10. The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Mich.

Best Free Museum

1. National Infantry Museum & Soldier Center in Columbus, Ga.
2. National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, Ill.
3. Wagner Free Institute of Science in Philadelphia, Penn.
4. Cincinnati Art Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio
5. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo.
6. Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, Md.
7. Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
8. The Museum at FIT in New York City, N.Y.
9. Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, Ohio
10. The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Md.

Sydney Sims

Columbus Ledger-Enquirer

Sydney Sims is the breaking news reporter at the Ledger-Enquirer. She covers local crime news and the latest city news. Before joining the LE, she worked for The Auburn Villager in Auburn, Ala. covering local government and city events. She is a graduate of Auburn University in Auburn, Ala. and is from Atlanta, Ga.