Museums

American Museum of the Moving Image

The nations's largest and most comprehensive holdings of moving image artifacts.

Building 92: Brooklyn Navy Yard Center

“BLDG 92” tells the story of this 300-acre site on the waterfront, which opened in 1801 as one of America's first shipyards and remained the nation's premier naval industrial facility for 165 years. This very new museum offers interactive oral histories with some of the first "Rosie the Riveters," and never-before-seen artifacts, photographs, audio and video footage and ship models.

City Reliquary

A window museum, with historical displays of ephemera, events, and radio.

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

Displays a cornucopia of decorative and design arts in Andrew Carnegie's Upper East Side Mansion.

El Museo del Barrio

Founded in 1969 against the background of the civil rights movement, EMB was originally housed in a single classroom in Spanish Harlem, and moved to several locations throughout the "Barrio" before finding a permanent home in the beautiful Heckscher Building in 1977. It focuses on the history of Puerto Ricans in New York City.

Ellis Island Immigration Museum

Opened in 1892 as the nation's first premier immigration station, the Ellis Island Museum is now open to public viewers. Visitors of all ages are welcome to explore this free attraction in New York and learn about the experiences of over 12 million immigrants once they completed their voyage across the Atlantic Ocean and head into the United States

Guggenheim Museum and Foundation

International Print Center

Established in 2000, the first and only non-profit devoted solely to the exhibition and understanding of fine art prints.

Intrepid Sea Air Space Museum

Jewish Museum

4,000 years of Jewish life and culture in a permanent collection of more than 27,000 objects.

Labor Arts [digital]

The cultural artifacts of working people and their organizations. A joint project by the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives/Tamiment Library at NYU.

Lower East Side Tenement Museum

The mission: "to promote tolerance and historical perspective through the presentation and interpretation of the variety of immigrant and migrant experiences on Manhattan's Lower East Side, a gateway to America." The Museum offers a variety of historical and public resources, including a preserved 19th century tenement building, special thematic programs, workshops, lectures, tours, plays, an interactive website.

Museum of American Finance

Dedicated to the history of Wall Street culture and events. Weekly walking tours available every Friday.

Museum of American Illustration

The Society of Illustrators run this museum and center, whose mission is to promote the art of illustration, its history, and evolving nature through exhibitions, lectures and education. It holds as well the collections of the defunct Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art.

Museum of Art and Design

Founded in 1956 by Aileen Osborn Webb as the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, and later renamed the American Craft Museum, MAD celebrates materials and processes that are embraced by practitioners in the fields of craft, art and design, as well as architecture, fashion, interior design, technology, performing arts, and art and design-driven industries.

Museum of the City of New York

Highlights of the collection: a Print and Photograph Collection features the work of artists like Jacob Riis and the Wurts brothers, the archives of Look magazine, and numerous specialized archives like "New York Before the War"; a Toy Collection includes toys made and played with in New York from colonial times to the present; a Theatre Collection features information and material from the late 18th century to the 20th century and includes sets, costumes, photos, posters, and more on the NYC stage; a Painting and Sculpture Collection has works dating from 1630 including pictures by Mierevelt, Wallaston, Copely, and Trumbull, and portraits of New York notables like Laguardia, Al Lewis, Robert Moses and others. This list is not exhaustive.

One of the leading collections of American art, including paintings, sculpture, prints and drawings. Special exhibitions, lectures, symposia, gallery talks, tours and other educational programs are presented on a regular basis.

New Amsterdam History Center

Devoted to encouraging greater awareness of the formative histories of New York City and New Netherland, the Center provides reference services, has a research center with archives, and offers digital and k-12 resources, along with grants for scholarship, publications, and others programs.

New York Food Museum

Now in its second decade of virtual exhibits.

New-York Historical Society

Exhibits, programs, photos, paintings, manuscripts and archives.

New York Transit Museum

Located in downtown Brooklyn, the Transit Museum is housed in an historic 1930s subway station. The Museum collects, exhibits and interprets the history, sociology and technology of public transportation systems in the New York region served by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, including bridges, tunnels, subways, buses and commuter railroads.

Paley Center for Media

Dedicated to audio-visual artifacts with a collection of over 50,000 TV and radio shows. Pick your selection from the library and watch it at one of the many video consoles.

Queens Museum

Artistic and educational programs and exhibitions that directly relate to the contemporary life of the borough's diverse constituents.

Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden

National historic district of American Architecture on eighty-three acres. Twenty-eight historical buildings, plus children's museum, dance and theater, concerts and art.

Staten Island Museum

Founded as a private society of local naturalists who pooled their personal collections to create the organization in 1908, the museum boasts “an unbroken record of the changing biodiversity of the region, spanning more than 150 years.” It was instrumental in the founding of Staten Island’s Zoo, Historical Society, and Greenbelt, and continues to focus on environmental protection. Located at Snug Harbor, it has extensive natural science collections, used for exhibitions and for research by appointment.

South Street Seaport Museum

Focused on the history of NYC as a leading port city. Exhibits, living history programs, educational activities, and actual historic ships and other artifacts. Archival collections available for researchers. The museum also publishes a magazine on New York history generally.

Studio Museum

An art museum which has as its mission the collection, documentation, preservation, and interpretation of African-American art and the artifacts of the African Diaspora.