Wanna hop around the city architecture or explore its art. New York city has all of it. Home to more than 80 museums, it has worn a crown to many facts which one should explore on your trip to the city. Museums in New York City are a must to explore, and for making your trip easy we have brought you a short guide for your help.
Being home to some of the world’s finest museums, from art collections to historical displays, there is a lot to discover and learn in these museums. As tempting as it may sound, a museum tour in NYC can be overwhelming. Two to three days aren’t enough to explore what these museums have on display. It is better to focus on a couple of museums with huge collections of your interest and visit the city again to explore the rest.
Additionally, several museums offer audio guides, so bring your earphones. So choose from the wide range of interests, including Jewish, Hispanic, Chinese to contemporary art and photographers and begin your NYC museum hopping day.
If you are wondering from where to start and which museum to visit, here we have rounded up a few world-class NYC Museums.
So, book your flight to New York and visit them.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
This world-class museum, popularly known as the Met is one of the top tourist places in NYC. Whether you are museum hopping or not, visiting this place is a must. It is the largest museum in America and the fifth largest in the world. It houses a huge collection of two million art works. Checking out these huge collections itself is a challenging task.
It displays a history of 5,000 years through Ancient Egyptian artifacts, ancient antiquity, paintings, sculptures, and European, Asian, America, Byzantine, Oceanian, and Islamic art.
The must-see here are Van Gogh’s self portrait with a straw hat, Washington crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze, and the temple of Dendur, etc.
If you are visiting from Detroit to New York, this museum is a must-visit.
The Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art or MOMA houses the world’s largest collections of modern art.
The diver collection ranges from architecture, photography, paintings, drawings, prints, and notable collections of artworks by Piccasso, Wyeth, Vangogh, Monet, Dali, Magritte, etc. This museum in midtown Manhattan offers visitors an opportunity to appreciate modern and contemporary art.
There is also a library in MOMA that holds 300,000 books, exhibition catalogs, more than 1,000 periodical titles, and more than 40,000 files of ephemera about artists. The collection in the museum has a mix of history’s famous artists and displays a wide range of influential American and European artists. It also has a second branch in NYC- MOMA PS1. It is one of the largest art institutions in the US, dedicated to contemporary art.
American Museum of Natural History
Located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in NYC, the American Museum of Natural History complex comprises 26 interconnected buildings that houses 45 permanent exhibition halls, a library, and a planetarium. The museum has a historic collection of 34 specimens of animals, plants, fungi, fossils, rocks, minerals, human remains, and cultural artifacts. Visitors prefer the Rose Center for Earth and Space, but one also checks out the dinosaurs and 500 butterflies at the Butterfly Conservatory.
It is a massive museum and can be overwhelming but worth your time. The museum was founded in 1869 to preserve the billion years of our planet’s history and the history of humanity. The fossil hall contains 600 specimens, including gargantuan Apatosaurus, Titanosaurus, and Tyrannosaurus, etc. It is one of the best museums in NYC.
9/11 Memorial and Museum
This memorial and museum dedicated to the tragic events of 9/11 is another must-visit in NYC. It is spread over an area of 110,000 sq feet. The museum showcases and explains the events of that fateful day of America’s history through two exhibitions. The museum houses a collection of 70,000 artifacts, including FDNY Ladder 3 fire trucks.
The memorial was established in 2011 and the museum was established in 2014 to commemorate the victims of the 9/11 attack that killed 2,977 people and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six people. Among all the relics like the staircase used by the people to flee the disaster, the ‘Survivor Tree’ is one of the highlights that miraculously survived the destruction.
Whitney Museum of American Art
On the list of best museums in NYC, is Whitney Museum of American Art that is popular among the visitors for its extensive collection of American Art. The museum was founded in 1930 by famous sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, after her works were turned down by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The masterpieces on display include paintings, photographs, prints, drawings, sculptures by famous artists like Jasper John, Georgia O’Keeffe, Andy Warhol, Roy LKichtenstein, etc.
Apart from its impressive collections of American Art, the museum’s architecture too deserves the attention. It has 50,000 sq ft of indoor galleries and focuses on 20th and 21st century American Art. Its permanent collection includes 25,000 paintings, sculptures, and drawing by more than 3,000 artists, spanning from the 19th century to the present.
Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum
This unique museum housed in the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid is an American military and maritime history museum. Unlike other museums, this one is located inside a US Navy aircraft carrier, built during the WWII, and is located at pier 86 in the Hudson River. This family-friendly museum in NYC, showcases the cruise missile submarine USS Growler, a concorde SST, as Lockheed A-12 supersonic reconnaissance plane, and space shuttle Enterprise.
IndiGo Discount- Flight Tickets from Rs 2,093
The museum was founded in 1982 and underwent some renovation in 2006. The recent addition to the museum is a brand new vintage fighter jet, a fully restored Douglas F4D Skyray. It was awarded USS Growler, a grayback class submarine, which carried nuclear Regulus missiles. There is a lot to see and learn in this museum and offers an unique experience of visiting a navy vessel.
Bottom Line
New York City is home to all things superlatives. There are over 80 museums in NYC alone, which are dedicated to various fields, including earth’s billion years of history, human evolution, ancient civilization, history of science, and art. Each of them boasts a collection of millions of artifacts and exploring each one of them on one trip isn’t possible. The best way to visit them is to make a beeline based on your interest.