An Art Lover's Guide to New York City

You can’t talk about art in New York City without talking about the Metropolitan Museum of Art—or the Met, as New Yorkers know it. The largest art museum in North and South America (and one of the most-visited art museums in the world, full-stop), this cultural colossus has stood proud on Fifth Avenue since 1880 and is easily one of the best things to do in New York City. You can explore 5,000 years of art history within its walls, from Egyptian sarcophagi to paintings by Picasso and Kandinsky. If the museum’s sheer scale feels daunting (it’s big enough to contain 38 football fields), book an express guided tour or private tour for an accessible dose of its collection highlights.

Once you’ve dedicated time to New York’s art-world bigshot, head straight to the Museum of Modern Art, another of the best museums in New York City. MoMA rivals the Met for scale—it sprawls across 708,000 square feet (65,775 square meters) and seven stories—but where the Met offers a vast survey, MoMA goes deep on the period from the mid-19th century to the present day. On a guided tour, look for iconic works by artists like Jackson Pollock, Marcel Duchamp, and Frida Kahlo. And if you’ve got time left, see a screening in its basement cinema, wander its sculpture garden, and discover pieces by artists working today.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum—known as the Guggenheim to its friends—is as notable for its exterior as for what’s found inside. Designed by American starchitect Frank Lloyd Wright, the spiral shape makes it an instant standout among the other cultural institutions lining the “Museum Mile” of Fifth Avenue. Unlike the Met or MoMA, the Guggenheim’s small permanent collection isn’t the primary focus. Instead, the landmark museum hosts several prominent New York City art exhibitions each year dedicated to modern and contemporary artists. Book a skip-the-line ticket before you visit to guarantee entry to its always-popular shows.

The Whitney is a showstopper. After relocating from its stuffy Uptown digs in 2014, the American art museum moved into a soaring Meatpacking District landmark designed by Renzo Piano. Today, the Whitney overlooks the High Line and offers some of the best views of the Downtown Manhattan skyline money can buy (and speaking of: It’s wise to pre-book your ticket to escape the perpetual lines). Once you’ve managed to tear yourself away from the open-air terraces and floor-to-ceiling windows, explore temporary and permanent exhibitions featuring American luminaries like Georgia O’Keeffe, Lee Krasner, and Edward Hopper.

Described as “a home for contemporary art and an incubator for new ideas,” the New Museum is aptly named and always on the cutting edge. That begins with its distinctive appearance: The museum occupies a seven-story structure that looks like a series of boxes stacked on each other. Technically the only dedicated museum of contemporary art in New York City, its boundary-pushing exhibitions chime with its hip Lower East Side location—and showcase artists overlooked by more traditional institutions.

Its name may translate to “the New Gallery,” but don’t confuse it with the New Museum. The Neue Galerie, housed in an elegant Upper East Side mansion, is one of New York City’s lesser-known (but no less worthy) art museums. Dedicated to arts and crafts from turn-of-the-century Germany and Austria, it’s home to Gustav Klimt’s landmark Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, though its permanent collection also features masterpieces from Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele, and Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius. Linger at your leisure—then round out your exploration with a walking tour of the neighborhood’s Gilded Age mansions.

Where else but the Rubin Museum of Art can you get your art with a side of mindfulness meditation? Dedicated to “the ideas, cultures, and art of Himalayan regions,” the museum features a permanent collection of 38,000 works spanning 1,500 years, including everything from religious tapestries and gilded sculptures to an immersive Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room installation. Its interactive Mandala Lab invites visitors to engage with multisensory interactive features designed to prompt an inner journey of self-awareness. And speaking of the senses, don’t miss its on-site Café Serai, where you can eat everything from momo dumplings to paneer curry.

You can’t talk about art in New York without talking about the street art that has lent a vibrant hue to the city’s walls for decades. While colorful graffiti and murals aren’t exactly in short supply in New York—and can be viewed all over town—it’s worth going out of your way to visit the Bushwick Collective’s “gallery” in Brooklyn. Its collection has been steadily growing and changing since 2011. Head to the intersection of St. Nicholas Avenue and Troutman Street and start wandering to see what’s currently on display. Better yet, book a New York City art tour led by a local street artist to get the inside track on what’s new in the neighborhood.

For several decades, the New York gallery scene has made Chelsea its home—and while that scene has broadened and atomized in recent years, this neighborhood in Manhattan’s West Side is still home to more than 300 galleries (including international heavy-hitters like Gagosian, Lisson, David Zwirner, and Hauser & Wirth). Set aside a few hours to wander the area arts district (roughly located from West 18th and West 27th Streets between 10th and 11th Avenues) to take in just a tiny fraction of this ever-changing cultural bounty. Or, if that sounds intimidating, book a High Line stroll and gallery crawl led by an art historian to hit the highlights.