There are museums in NYC for just about anything you can imagine. Many of them are among the world’s best.
Latin Museums in NYC
New York City’s Latin museums include El Museo del Barrio, Hispanic Society, MoMA and the National Museum of the American Indian.
El Museo del Barrio was founded by East Harlem’s Puerto Rican community. It has a broader Latino focus now, but is still one of the best places in the world to see Taíno art.
Hispanic Society is a research library and museum that holds the best collection of Spanish art outside of Spain. It has famous Goyas. The library holds priceless colonial treasures that are mind-blowing to see in person. Visiting the Sorolla room is liking going to the beach in Valencia, Spain. Europeans know about it, but New Yorkers don’t. When some of the collection traveled to Madrid during renovations, lines ran around the block.
MoMA isn’t a Latin museum, but the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America makes it one of the world’s leading centers for Latin American art. The Cisneros Collection is one of the world’s best collections of Latin American modern art. She was collecting when the art world didn’t think there was real art in Latin America. Cisneros funded the Research Institute to increase the academic representation of Latin American art because that will raise its value.
The National Museum of the American Indian is part of the Smithsonian. Its original focus was Native Americans of the United States, but it now produces excellent bilingual exhibitions about the Indigenous Americas.
El Museo del Barrio
El Museo del Barrio is NYC’s Caribbean and Latin American art museum.…
MoMA, Museum of Modern Art
MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art, is the home of the Cisneros…
National Museum of the American Indian
Indigenous culture of North America, the Caribbean and South America ~Visit the…
African Museums in NYC
New York City’s African museums include the Schomburg Center, Studio Museum in Harlem, and Africa Center.
The Brooklyn Museum is not an African museum, but has a strong collection of African art, and functions as sort of a community center for Brooklyn’s African diaspora community.
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum in Prospect Park is Brooklyn’s big museum. The third…
Schomburg Center
The New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture…
The Most Popular Museums in NYC
New York City’s most popular museums are the Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Museum of Natural History, MoMA Museum of Modern Art, and the Guggenheim Museum.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is New York City’s encyclopedia of art.…
American Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History is the world’s largest natural history…
MoMA, Museum of Modern Art
MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art, is the home of the Cisneros…
Guggenheim Museum
One of the world’s great modern art collections ~Guggenheim Museum Tickets guggenheim.org…
Uptown Manhattan Museums
American Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History is the world’s largest natural history…
El Museo del Barrio
El Museo del Barrio is NYC’s Caribbean and Latin American art museum.…
Guggenheim Museum
One of the world’s great modern art collections ~Guggenheim Museum Tickets guggenheim.org…
Met Cloisters
The Met Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park is the Metropolitan Museum of…
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is New York City’s encyclopedia of art.…
Midtown Manhattan Museums
MoMA, Museum of Modern Art
MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art, is the home of the Cisneros…
Morgan Library & Museum
The Morgan Library & Museum houses J.P. Morgan’s collection of historic manuscripts,…
Downtown Manhattan Museums
National Museum of the American Indian
Indigenous culture of North America, the Caribbean and South America ~Visit the…
New Museum of Contemporary Art
The New Museum is Manhattan’s only museum dedicated solely to contemporary art.…
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art collects modern, post-war and contemporary art…
Brooklyn Museums
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum in Prospect Park is Brooklyn’s big museum. The third…
Queens Museums
Museum of the Moving Image
The Museum of the Moving Image is NYC’s museum of film, television…
MoMA PS1
MoMA PS1 is the Museum of Modern Art’s experimental art space. MoMA…
Queens Museum
The Queens Museum in Flushing Meadows Corona Park is the big art…
Bronx Museums
Bronx Museum
Contemporary art with connections to Bronx communities
Staten Island Museums
The Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island Children’s Museum, National Lighthouse Museum, Staten Island Museum at Snug Harbor, and Richmond Town are among the museums in Staten Island.
A Change is in the Works
Curators have begun adapting to the fact that modern and contemporary art was not only created by men, in Europe and the United States, from about 1860 to the present. The Museum of Modern Art completely restructured their exhibitions in 2019 to be more inclusive of gender, place and time. ¡Bravo!
A Euro-centric point of view no longer works. A lot of great art is coming out of storage as a result.
Why Take your Kids to Museums in NYC?
The artist who set auction records in 2017 for an American artist, a Black artist, and the first contemporary art made after 1980 to pass the $100 million mark, was Jean-Michel Basquiat, a Haitian–Puerto Rican from Brooklyn.
How did that happen? As a child his mother used to take him to the Brooklyn Museum. Take your children to the museum. You never know what might happen.