My Favorite Art Museums in NYC
The city of New York is art itself, and it’s the kind of place you go to experience art as a lover of the craft, but also the kind of place you go to repeatedly discover all you don’t know about art. I don’t think I have ever been to New York and not gone to a museum, which is a statement.
The Museum Mile (82nd to 105th streets) has eight major museums to visit, and in just four days, I made it to three of them: The Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
These are the places to see the work of juggernauts no longer with us like Picasso, Monet, and Van Gogh, but it’s also a place to be introduced to major, modern forces who are making waves by putting incomparable pieces of themselves out into the world right now.
In this post, I thought I would share why I love each of the museums I visited and special exhibitions that made the experiences that much more sensational.
Guggenheim
The Guggenheim is probably one of the most structurally recognizable museums with its twentieth century architecture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site with four impressive stories that house impressionist, modern, and contemporary pieces in its permanent collection, but also regularly features special exhibitions like Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility which opened October 20, 2023 and will close April 7, 2024.
I had the opportunity to see the Going Dark exhibition in December, which reminded me of work by artists like Ming Smith and Kerry James Marshall and introduced me to the stunning work of artists like Carrie Mae Weems and Faith Ringgold. This exhibition “presents works of art that feature partially obscured or hidden figures” according to the Guggenheim website.
In terms of the museum layout, I think the rotunda and winding hallways compel you to move forward, deeper, and upward into art exploration in a way that other museum layouts don’t necessarily always lend to.
I happen to have also really enjoyed the food I ordered at Café Rebay and had to try hard enough not to buy the entire museum store. At a thirty-dollar general entrance fee, I would say the Guggenheim is well worth the visit.
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
Whenever I visit a museum, I most often gravitate to the modern and contemporary sections, so imagine my excitement over a museum full of modern art. Maybe it’s the digital marketer in me that loves vibrant blocks of color like Rothko’s work, prints that make statements in the simplest of ways like Ed Ruscha’s work, and pieces that push the limits of art in tandem with the current times like all the artists featured in the museum.
When I visited in December 2023, I saw the exhibition Ed Ruscha: Now Then, which was there from September 10, 2023 to January 13, 2024. It displayed the work of postwar American artist Ed Ruscha who studied commercial art and drew inspiration from popular culture. As a person who loves words and language, I thought there was something particularly intriguing about the way he used color and contrast to convey phrases that could really mean something or nothing depending on who’s viewing the work.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Before visiting in December 2023, it had been years since I had visited to the Met. My class took a trip to New York when I was a junior in high school, and I had the privilege of experiencing Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, an exhibit that celebrated the late Alexander McQueen's extraordinary contributions to fashion. I have always loved art and museums, but I have distinct memories of seeing that exhibition and having the revelation that art takes many forms, including fashion design. At the time, I wanted to be a fashion designer, and though that dream is long gone, I can undoubtedly say that early experience at the Met had a hand in shaping my ideas of traveling the world and being a witness to culture.
On my most recent visit, I saw the special exhibition Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism that was open from October 13, 2023 to January 21, 2024. I was completely enthralled with the work featured in this exhibit because I just simply love color. The Mediterranean scenes depicted in these pieces seem to jump off the canvas with bursts of color and dynamic movement and intense texture. The Met website notes, “Henri Matisse and Andre Derain embarked on a partnership that led to a wholly new, radical artistic language later known as Fauvism,” an art style I was not particularly familiar with in detail, but came to love when I experienced this exhibition.
