Last updated: September 8, 2026

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 were members at both the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH) and the Menil Collection, we had access to something called a “reciprocal agreement” and could 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 atoo.  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 Menil Collection, membership at the Contributor level and above, is associated with the North American Reciprocal Agreement, which will give you free access to around 1000 museums across the country. This is a really great benefit!

The MFAH membership was part of the Museum Alliance Reciprocal Agreement, but it looks like that might have gone away. The website says that at the Patron level ($250) you get some reciprocal privileges, including the Art Institute of Chicago and the Guggenheim Museum in NY. We were in Chicago once and were able to make two trips to the Art Institute and skip the line as well, which was pretty great!

In my new-ish city, Denver, membership at the Denver Art Museum at the Family Plus level ($175) provides reciprocal benefits to museums in the Western Reciprocal Network and Museums West Network. At the Contributing level ($300), you can also access museums in the Reciprocal Organization of Associated Museums (ROAM) and the Metropolitan Reciprocal Network.

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, take a look at Art Museums in New York Part 2.

UPDATE: This blog post was updated on September 8, 2026 to reset hyperlinks and to make minor editorial changes

Image 1: berniezang, Guggenheim, CC-BY-NC-2.0, flickr.com, February 24, 2013.

Image 2: Moody Man, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, CC-BY-NC-2.0, flickr.com, June 3, 2017.