Art Museums in New York Part 1

I believe it is probably no surprise, but I’ve never found a city other than New York that has so many great art museums, and I have visited very many art museums around the world over the years. The nice thing about art museums is that they always have exhibits scheduled well in advance, so you can check online to see if they have anything that is interesting to you before your trip to NY. Of course the permanent collections for many of these museums are amazing also. In my experience, the trick to having a good time at a big art museum like the Met or MoMA is to pick a particular exhibit or piece of the permanent collection that you want to see and go straight there. For the most cohesive experience, do not stop or wander. You probably will do that a little bit getting lost on the way to where you want to be anyway, but stay on task. Large museums are overwhelming, so it is important to just accept that you can’t see it all and enjoy what you do see.

Since my husband Andy and I are members at both the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH) and the Menil Collection, we have access to something called a “reciprocal agreement” and can get into some of the NY museums for free. By the way, this actually works at a large number of other art museums around the country too. So, if you are already members of your local art museum or would want to become members, it might be good and cost effective to check into that. The MFAH membership is part of the Museum Alliance Reciprocal and the Menil Collection is associated with the North American Reciprocal. The following links will tell you which museums participate.

Museum Alliance Reciprocal List of Participating Museums:

http://themodern.org/museum-alliance-reciprocal-program

North American Reciprocal List of Participating Museums:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxub3J0aGFtZXJpY2FucmVjaXByb2NhbG11c2V1bXN8Z3g6NmMxZGQzNmFiMGEyZjg0NQ

So I hope that your next trip to NY will include some time at any of the city’s fabulous art museums. For a rundown on some of my favorite art museums in NY both big and small, be on the lookout for my Art Museums in New York Part 2 blog post that is coming soon.

Photo Credit 1 – berniezang, CC-BY-NC-2.0, flickr.com, February 24, 2013.

Photo Credit 2 – Moody Man, CC-BY-NC-2.0, flickr.com, June 3, 2017.