New York is the world’s most happening city and the capital of western culture. It’s a city world famous for museums, shows, events, festivals and plays. With so many things to do and see, it’s not hard to see why this city never sleeps!
Art Museums
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, located on the Upper East Side, is New York’s largest museum. Its permanent collection houses over two million pieces of art spanning a 5,000 year time period! A visit to the museum can easily encompass several days and therefore it’s better to selectively choose which exhibits to see. The museum has a little something to suit everyone’s tastes, history fans in particular will enjoy the Egyptian and Greco-Roman antiquities sections. The Temple of Dendur, an ancient temple transplanted from Egypt, is one of the section’s spectacular highlights! Frequent exhibitions cover subjects as broad as installation art, photography and classical paintings.
The museum is open until 9 pm on Fridays and Saturdays, and closed on Mondays. Admission is donation based, with the recommended donation being $25 per person.
An interior courtyard in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Located near the Met and also on the Upper East Side, is the world-famous Guggenheim Museum. One of the few museums in the world whose building is more famous than the collection it houses, the Guggenheim was designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright and its wild exterior is well worth the visit alone. That’s not to say the museum’s collection is subpar, because it is most certainly not. The museum’s houses only the most famous artists and their celebratory pieces. Some examples of the big names exhibited in the Guggenheim inclide Picasso, Pissarro, Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Chagall and Franz Marc.
The museum is open until 7:45 pm on Saturdays and the admission fee is discretionary from 5:45 pm. The museum is closed on Thursdays and admission is $18.
The wild stylings of architect Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim building.
Still on the Upper East Side, the Whitney Museum of American Art is dedicated solely to displaying the best in American art. Its collection includes pieces from many different periods of American art history and well-known artists such as Rockwell Kent, Georgia O’Keefe and Edward Hopper.
The museum is open until 9 pm on Fridays and from 6 pm onwards admission is discretionary. On other days admission is $18, though the museum is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.
Modern art lovers will fall in love with the Museum of Modern Art, or MOMA. The museum is located in Midtown on 58th street and is considered to be one of the world’s principal modern art museums. Encompassing six floors, the museum contains thousands of pieces, including works from some of the world’s best-known aritsts such as Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko, Monet, Matisee and Joan Miro. The museum’s most notable pieces are Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ and Monet’s room-sized ‘Water Lilies’.
Thanks to a promotion by the department store Target, admission to the museum is free every Friday night from 4 pm – 8 pm. At other times admission is $25. Allocate at least three hours for your visit.
Monet's room-sized Water Lilies is one of the highlights of the MOMA.
A smaller but still worthwhile modern art museum is the New Museum of Contemporary Art. This museum is located in the Bowery, and while it is nowhere near the size of its uptown cousin, modern art fans will still find the museum to be worth a visit. The museum hosts two exhibitions at any one time and they rotate frequently.
The museum stays open until 9 pm on Thursdays and offers free admission between 7 pm and 9 pm. Every other day the admission is $14, though the museum is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.
The small but interesting New Museum has a unique architectural style.
