Culture

Museums & galleries

The indoor half of the city — museums, galleries, historic houses and the cinemas still worth the trip. What to see, and when it is free.

See all 15 on the map

Everywhere worth going

MuseumThe Met Cloisters · Brooklyn MuseumGallerySalon 94CinemaSyndicated Bar Theater Kitchen · Metrograph

Museum

9.8The Met CloistersWashington Heights$$On the MUSEENYC M ListMedieval Europe rebuilt in Fort Tryon Park, over the Hudson.9.7Brooklyn MuseumProspect Heights$$On the MUSEENYC M ListA huge collection next to Prospect Park, and no one's in line.9.7New York Transit MuseumBrooklyn Heights$On the MUSEENYC M ListA real 1936 subway station, closed since 1946, with twenty vintage cars parked on the platform.9.5The Frick CollectionUpper East Side$On the MUSEENYC M ListOld Masters hung at the scale of a home. It feels like real luxury, because it was.9.3Museum of the Moving ImageAstoria$$Film and TV history in Astoria, with a permanent Jim Henson exhibit.9.1The Noguchi MuseumAstoria$A sculptor's own museum, in the building he worked in, with a garden in the middle.8.9The Whitney Museum of American ArtMeatpacking District$$Renzo Piano's museum at the bottom of the High Line, with outdoor terraces on several floors.8.9The Metropolitan Museum of ArtUpper East Side$$Two million works and some genuinely magnificent rooms — go off-peak or the crowd wins.8.8MoMA PS1Long Island City$$A former Queens schoolhouse showing the work MoMA won't put on 53rd Street.8.7Neue GalerieUpper East Side$$$A small Fifth Avenue mansion holding Klimt’s gold portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, with a Viennese cafe downstairs.Rating TBDNicholas Roerich MuseumUpper West Side$A free museum in a townhouse, full of Himalayan paintings almost nobody knows about.Rating TBDSchomburg Center for Research in Black CultureHarlem$A research library and free exhibition space holding one of the great archives of the Black diaspora.