Museums
The Met, MoMA, the Natural History Museum and the smaller collections — plus the tenement, the aircraft carrier and the memorial that are museums too.
9 placesThe Metropolitan Museum of Art
Two million objects across five thousand years, in a building you cannot see in a day. Pick three departments and accept that you are missing the rest.
Museum of Modern Art
Starry Night, the melting clocks, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and Warhol's soup cans, in six floors that can genuinely be done in three hours.
American Museum of Natural History
The blue whale, the dinosaurs and the dioramas, in a rambling complex of twenty-odd interconnected buildings on the west side of Central Park.
9/11 Memorial and Museum
Two voids where the towers stood, with the names of every person killed cut through the bronze parapets. The plaza is free. The museum below is not, and it is very hard.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Frank Lloyd Wright's white spiral, which the artists of the day signed a petition against. Take the lift to the top and walk down the ramp.
Whitney Museum of American Art
American art only, in a Renzo Piano building at the bottom of the High Line with outdoor terraces on four floors. Free on Friday nights and free under 25 always.
The Frick Collection
Old Masters hung in the steel magnate's own house, on the walls where he put them. Small, quiet, and the best hour of art in New York.
Tenement Museum
Two preserved tenement buildings on Orchard Street, visited only on a guided tour, telling the immigration story through the actual families who lived in the actual rooms.
Intrepid Museum
An aircraft carrier moored on the Hudson with a Concorde, a Space Shuttle and a submarine parked around it. The best museum in New York for anyone who likes machines.