What I love most about art museums is what I also love most about Temples: that they are one of the very few places left in modernity that invite the patron to quietly transcend themselves, even if only for an hour. Everywhere else—especially in mega cities like New York, with its world-dominating financial districts, expensive restaurants, and outrageous cost of living—are specifically designed to take as much of your money as possible while delivering only ephemeral gratifications that remain as insatiable as they are fleeting.
By contrast, Art Museums and temple ordinances by contrast are both intended to take you out of your own head, by quieting you down and causing you to contemplate something beyond yourself, something that at least tries to feel after the eternal, something with genuine aspirations to last. How fitting that New York has so many of these art museums, where the need for this respite is greatest; how fitting that the Manhattan Temple is within walking distance of so many of them.
Since my move to the northeast several years ago, I have become a sort of aficionado of NYC art museums; sometimes pushing a baby stroller through them, or with a newborn infant strapped to my chest, but always making time for these edifices when I can. They are, in general, more baby-friendly than a Temple–though I seek spiritual rejuvenation in both, as I’ve indicated, for the same reasons.
At this point, I’ve been inside enough of them to rank them, as to which are most worth your time. For in New York, as in our mortal probations in general, there is always less time than we think.
Top Tier (worth the trip to NYC alone):
-The Metropolitan Museum of Art (AKA The Met)
This is seriously the U.S. equivalent of the British Museum; the $25 ticket you buy there is good for 3 days, and you actually need that much time to get through it all! Features artwork from all major world civilizations ancient and modern. Every other museum in NYC is playing for second place.
-The Museum of Modern Art (AKA The MOMA)
Features this obscure painting called “Starry Night,” by some unknown artist named Vincent Van Gogh; perhaps you’ve heard of it. Also hosts some Picassos, Monets, Dalis, Andy Warhols, Mondrians, etc. Free after 5pm on Fridays; otherwise $25. My personal favorite museum (the Met is almost too big for me, it overwhelms me and short-circuits my ability to comprehend all the masterpieces therein).
-American Museum of Natural History
Has some very famous dinosaur fossils, including a complete T. Rex. Entry fee is free (pay what you want). Originally commissioned by Teddy Roosevelt.
All three of these museums are within walking distance of each other, on a stretch of Central Park East in Manhattan known as the “Museum Mile.”
Second Tier (worth going out of your way for if you’re already in the City anyways)
-Brooklyn Museum
Free entry. Eclectic mix of both radical avant-garde and more traditional paintings, including a famous portrait of George Washington (the one that the $1 bill is based on). Directly adjacent to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, and only a few blocks from a large Civil War memorial, as well as the impressive Brooklyn Public Library, which also often has free rotating exhibits.
-Met Cloisters
Built in the style of an 11th-century cloister, housing a large collection of authentic Medieval European artwork, collected by an American sculptor a century ago who raided the ruins of old western European cloisters the same way the Europeans had been raiding other countries for centuries. Located in the secluded Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan; good feeling in there, feels like a Temple itself, has fantastic views of the Hudson River. Really disabuses you of the notion that Medieval art was less “advanced” than the Renaissance art that followed it.
-Frick Madison
Beautiful multi-storied Manhattan museum with stunningly gorgeous portraiture from 18th and 19th century England, France, Spain, and Italy. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this museum, and how much I fell in love with some of these painting subjects who have been dead for at least two centuries. Sadly, one of the few museums wherein no children under 12 allowed inside.
-Intrepid Air and Space Museum
The USS Intrepid is a decommissioned aircraft carrier permanently anchored in Manhattan harbor. Contains the Space Shuttle Enterprise, a decommissioned nuclear submarine, and a wide collection of fighter jets, including a Blackbird spy plane and F-14 Tomcat.
-The Rubin
Multi-storied Manhattan museum featuring medieval Himalayan and East-Asian Buddhist artwork. Peaceful feeling inside; another place that feels like a Temple.
-Whitney Museum
Multi-storied Manhattan museum featuring early-to-late 20th century American artwork that you can spend an entire afternoon inside.
-New Museum
Official Art gallery for the New School, one of the major universities and art programs in NYC. Multiple stories, lots of Postmodernism and Avant-Garde installations.
-Noguchi
Beautifully designed sculpture museum in Queens featuring works by the Japanese artist Isamu Noguchi. Peaceful feeling inside. Free every first Friday of month. Also located near Socrates Sculpture Park, a free outdoor sculpture park and gardens overlooking the East River.
-Morgan Library and Museum
The personal Manhattan residence of the Robber Baron JP Morgan (of Chase Bank fame); built in a French Renaissance-revival style complete with painted ceilings, and featuring his large personal book collection. Includes three Gutenberg Bibles (the most in North America), numerous medieval illuminated manuscripts (including a Dante’s Inferno), Tyndale and Wycliffe Bibles, Abolitionist paraphernalia, and 19th-century paintings. Free entrance Fridays after 5pm.
-Staten Island Museum
The only museum of note in NYC’s smallest borough (by population), and is in effect a much smaller version of both the Met and the Natural History Museum, containing both scattered artwork from around the ancient world and pre-historic fossils. Also contains informative exhibits on the Lenape: the Native American group that inhabited what is now Staten Island and New Jersey.
Third Tier (only visit if you’re already in the neighborhood anyways and have some spare time)
-Guggenheim
Despite the famous name, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building is frankly more interesting than the actual gallery, which has no permanent collection. Wright’s design is very stroller and wheelchair friendly, but I’ve been there twice, and found myself underwhelmed and done in less than an hour each time. Located on the Museum Mile. Unlike the Met, the $25 ticket doesn’t feel like it gives you much bang for your buck.
-Museum of City of New York
History museum about NYC. It’s honestly more fun than the Guggenheim and is legitimately educational, but thin on actual historical artifacts. Located on the Museum mile as well.
-El Museo del Barrio
Contemporary Puerto Rican and Nuyorican artwork. I really wanted this museum to be cool, but like the Guggenheim, I finished it in less than an hour, and had to pay $25 for the privilege. Again, only visit if you’re already on the Museum Mile anyways.
-Jewish Museum
Another museum I wanted to be cool, but that I was, again, done and underwhelmed with in less than an hour. It’s not even on the Museum Mile (though still at least in Manhattan). Features both old and contemporary Jewish artwork.
-Fotografiska
A multi-storied museum of contemporary photography in a refurbished old hotel in Manhattan. One of the newest NYC museums; an expansion of a Swedish museum in Stockholm.
-Bronx Museum of Art
Another photography museum, that occasionally has artwork on loan from the Met; the price is at least free. Located near the Edgar Allan Poe house, where he wrote “Annabel Lee by the Sea” (Poe is buried in Baltimore).
-American Folk Art Museum
Another too-small-museum that is at least free. Features legitimately impressive outsider art that you only wish there was more of. Located directly next to the Manhattan LDS temple, so you might as well check it out if you’re there.
-Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian
Gets points from me for featuring both older and contemporary Native American art, belying the narrative of the erased indigenous. Features a concise history lesson of Native Americans in New York specifically, and interrogates the complex story of how they supposedly sold Manhattan island for some beads. Free admission. Once again, not nearly as big as one would hope (a recurrent theme in NYC, you’ll note); but is located by Battery Park (where the ferries sail to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty), so you might as well check it out while you’re there.
-Neue Gallery
Small museum in Manhattan featuring early-20th century German and Austrian avant-garde art, including some Jewish paintings that had to be recovered from Nazi war criminals. No children under 12 allowed inside.
-NYU Art Gallery
Really small art gallery that, again, has good paintings but you’re done in less than an hour; at least it’s free. Only visit if you’ll be in or around NYU anyways.
-Queens Museum
Features installations from the 1964 Worlds Fair, including a large-scale map of the city (not to mention sites from the 1997 film Men In Black).
-Cooper Hewitt
Design and fashion museum on the museum mile.
Fourth Tier (avoid except out of morbid curiosity or boredom)
I keep mentioning museums that have a good feeling in them because this one has a definitely dark feeling inside. Newborn baby Nathan couldn’t stop crying the whole time we were in there the one time we visited. Features a frankly tacky, distasteful, and disrespectful gallery of the personal effects of the people killed that day. TVs everywhere show the planes hitting the towers on constant loop. Doesn’t even give a good history lesson; heck, doesn’t even make good propaganda. It explores neither the past nor the future, but only endlessly relives that one day on repeat.
-Columbia University art gallery
No permanent collection, only a rotating exhibit of navel-gazing art installations by Columbia-affiliated art professors. May not even be worth the visit even if you’re visiting Columbia anyways.
Special Mention:
-Newark Museum of Art
Located in Newark, NJ, right across the Hudson from Manhattan, but that features a legitimately large and beautiful collection of artwork from around the world more impressive than all of the Tier Three and Four museums in NYC I just listed, and even some of the Tier Two! Worth going out of your way for.
-Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University
Located less than an hour south of Manhattan, and free to the public. A university art gallery easily more impressive than either NYU’s or Columbia’s, and possibly even better than the New School’s.
-Montclair Art Museum
The oldest (though certainly not the biggest) publicly-accessible art museum in the state of New Jersey. Contains both traditional and contemporary Native American art, as well as the only permanent exhibit of George Inness, the 19th-century American impressionist landscape painter. Located about 19 miles west of Times Square.