In Italian

Museums in New York, an endless list.

It’s difficult, almost impossible to be able to list all of them, considering the tendency by which new installations are created and cared frequently. And above all the space and the attention this city has always reserved to arts and its variegate forms of expression.

Museums that look like Chinese Boxes, expository spaces catalyzing the attention projecting into a dimension made of senses and perceptions, buildings’ walls of entire blocks turning into giant canvases of motivated street artists.

And even ancient bookstores hiding unexpected treasures, industrial sheds keeping with a maniacal care relics of cult movies and TV series, ancient nobler dwellings telling about events and characters of remote eras.

And it’s not certainly finished, yet. For every visitor there’s a wide choice to locate his/her ideal path.

To make “the task” easier and optimize time – above all if you are thinking about a journey to the Big Apple and have few days in your hands – I selected on purpose for you a variegate list of museums not to miss in New York.

From the most famous to the oddest and original ones, with useful info about opening hours and extraordinary free admissions.

[before to plan your tour always check on the museums official website (usually in the visit, hours & admissions page) that there aren’t any change about fares and admissions]

The Metropolitan Museum terrace is a challenge to the evident stereotypes of Manhattan: the park doesn’t appear anymore like the typical green rectangle of the aerial photos nor the neat forest of who walk through it.

Seen from the Metropolitan terrace, Central Park is an enormous emerald pillow studded with diamonds, the downtown skyscrapers. It’s one of the views of New York where arts meet nature and architecture.

(Patricie Buffa)

Metropolitan Museum of Art

I begin quoting the one that is by far my favourite museum in New York: the Met.

It’s one of the most complete and complicated museums in the world, ranging from Prehistory to Egyptian art, Assyrian-Babylonian, Greek, Roman as far as arriving to the European painting of the 1700s and 1800s, in a labyrinthine path of expos.

The facility includes the huge Dendur Temple, took down and rebuilt in an amazing room with a lake (as scheduled in its original position), a few untouched burial rooms and an entire triclinic system coming from the Roman era excavations of Boscoreale, near Pompeii and Ercolano.

Met is at 1000, 5th Ave.

Opening hours: Sunday-Thursday 10am-5:30pm; on Fridays and on Saturdays 10am-9pm.

Adults, $25.

Here you can find all discounts and reductions. Free admission nights are not scheduled.

MoMA

By far the most loved museum by New Yorkers: it houses the most complete modern art collection in the world.

What about some names?

Van Gogh, Cézanne, Picasso, Warhol, Rosseau, Hopper and much more.

MoMa is at 11 West, 53rd St. and has a sort of branch – let pass me the term – in Queens, the Moma Ps1 at 22-25, Jackson Ave, Long Island City.

Opening hours: open 7 days a week 10:30am-5:30pm. Until 8pm on Fridays. On the contrary the MoMA Ps1 is opened 7 days a week Noon- 6pm.

Adults, 25$ MoMA, 10$ MoMA Ps1.

Free admission on Fridays 4pm-8pm.

Guggenheim Museum

The “mecca” of the art of the 1900s par excellence, framed by the wonderful architecture created by Frank Lloyd Wright.

The Guggenheim Museum is at 1071, 5th Ave.

Opening hours: Monday-Wednesday and on Fridays and on Sundays 10am-5:45pm. On Saturdays 10am-7:45pm.

Pay what you wish: on Saturdays 5:45pm-7:45pm

Frick Collection

A wonderful house of the early 1900s.

One of the most famous museums in the city thanks to the precious collections housed.

12 rooms holding masterpieces ranging from Goya to Vermeer, from Tiziano to El Greco.

The Frick Collection is at 1East, 70th St.

Opening hours: Tuesday-Saturday 10am-6pm. On Sundays 11am-5pm.

Adults: 22$.

Free admission on the first Friday of the month 6pm-9pm.

Pay what you wish: On Sundays 11am-1pm.

New York Historical Society

The heart of the history, the excellence and the New Yorker evolution over time: from the city foundation until nowadays. Practically the most ancient museum in the city.

Over 50.00 objects exposed in chronological order, according to characters and events related to them. At the entrance it’s possible to admire one of the last murals by Keith Haring in the city.

The New York Historical Society is at 170, Central Park West.

Opening hours: Tuesday-Thursday 10am-6pm. On Fridays 10am-8pm. On Saturdays 10am-6pm. On Sundays 11am-5pm.

Adults: $20.

Pay what you wish: on Fridays 6pm-8pm.

American Museum of Natural History

The paradise for children (made even more popular by the famous movie “Night at the Museum”) and students fond of history, archaeology, geology and mineralogy.

Over 30 millions manufactured products, among skeletons of prehistoric animals, gems and precious stones, sea fauna and flora, relics and reconstructions of native cultures and different habitats of the world. Not to miss the Planetarium and the Fossil Halls exhibiting among other things dinosaurs and mammoths’ skeletons.

The American Museum of national History is at Central Park West & 79th St.

Opening hours: open 7 days a week 10am-5:45pm.

Adults: 22$

An hour before closing it is possible to enter free.

Morgan Library & Museum

A private collection of ancient books – it is inevitable in the list of museums in New York not to miss – created by the banker John Pierpont Morgan and then turned into a museum by his heirs.

Today the Morgan Library & Museum keeps and shows proudly inestimable treasures, starting from the historic building containing it to the manuscripts, the vintage print, the famous authors autograph pages, as far as a precious collection of rare books, in some cases unique copies survived the time and the wear and tear.

In 2003 the original building was completely restored and integrated by a new installation realized on the basis of the Italian architect Renzo Piano project.

The Morgan Library is at 225, Madison Ave.

Opening hours: Tuesday-Thursday 10am-5pm. On Fridays 10:30am-9pm. On Saturdays 10am-6pm. On Sundays 11am-6pm.

Adults, 20$.

Free admission on Fridays 7pm-9pm.

Museum of the City of New York

A museum completely focused on New York and its history.

Relics, maps, models of the city on scale, vintage pictures, autograph pages and entire (and authentic) furniture of ancient New Yorkers dwellings demolished over time.

The Museum of the City of New York is at 1220, Firth Ave, 103rd St.

Opening hours: open 7 days a week 10am-6pm.

Adults: 18$.

Here you can find admission ticket reductions.

Brooklyn Museum of Art

A rich collection of Egyptian and the classic world relics (over 1500), to which join collections of American painting, art of the Pacific islands, African and Islamic culture.

The exhibition is closed by an avant-garde center for the feminist art.

The Brooklyn Museum of Art is located in Brooklyn at 200, Eastern Parkway.

Opening hours: Wednesday-Sunday 11am-6pm (on Thursdays until 10pm)

Adults, 16$.

Free evening admissions are not scheduled but only a series of reductions (here).

Museum of the Moving Image

A visit really recommended above all if you are fond of the Movies in general and of the cult American TV series.

It’s possible to follow the several production phases of a movie, including special effects, the soundtracks, dubbing and movie script.

Do you remember “Mork and Mindy”, the famous TV series that launched Robin Williams? And even The Exorcist, The Planet of the Apes, Mrs Doubtfire, Grease (and many other ones)? Here you can admire playbills, costumes and original masks used on the sets.

The Museum of the Moving Image is located in Astoria, in Queens at 36, 35th Ave.

Opening hours: on Wednesdays and on Thursdays 10:30am-2pm. On Fridays 10:30am-8pm. O n Saturdays and on Sundays 11:30am-7pm.

Adults: 15$.

Free admission on Fridays 4pm-8pm.