Top 10 Best Museums in New York City

If you're looking for a place rich with culture, history, and great art, New York City boasts some of the most in all of North America, and this is represented by the incredible number of excellent museums throughout it. For people planning of finding some great museums to visit throughout a trip to Manhattan, this list should be perfect for you! Enjoy!
The Top Ten
1 The Metropolitan Museum of Art

There are many incredible art museums throughout the world, but few are as renowned and excellent as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, commonly called "The Met." Located on the outskirts of Central Park, the Met is a magnificent and gigantic building filled with some of the most incredible artwork known to mankind.

Inside this museum are many historic outfits, beautiful sculptures, and entire temples from ancient religions, many of which date back hundreds or even thousands of years. Of course, the highlight of this museum is the artwork. Well-known paintings such as The Death of Socrates, Washington Crossing the Delaware, The Great Wave of Kanagawa, and The Dance Class, not to mention numerous works by Van Gogh and Picasso, all reside in this fantastic museum. It was the fourth most visited art museum in the world during 2021 and the most visited in North America, so it's definitely worth a visit!

2 American Museum of Natural History

On the Upper West Side of Manhattan, located just outside Central Park, you can find a magical, impressive, and interesting museum forever famous for the Night at the Museum franchise, the American Museum of Natural History. Filled with fascinating exhibits on the biodiversity and evolution of the human race, it's always worth a visit if you wish to learn about different human cultures, our evolution as a species, and everything there is to know about the natural world.

3 The 9/11 Memorial and Museum

Everyone knows the terrible tragedy of 9/11 and the shock that followed the attack. That's why so many people visit the beautiful memorials constructed at the former World Trade Center site. Adjacent to those memorials is one of the finest museums ever created, designed to educate and enlighten visitors about the events leading up to and occurring during the 9/11 attacks. It also serves as a reminder of the lasting impact on the world.

This museum is certainly not for the faint of heart, as it contains devastating footage and somber reminders of all the lives lost on that day. However, that is precisely the purpose of the museum: to remind people of the magnitude of this tragedy. Throughout the museum, you'll find numerous artifacts from the attack, accompanied by meticulously detailed information about every aspect related to the attack.

4 The Tenement Museum

One of the more recent museums in the city, the Tenement Museum was founded in 1988, although the buildings in which the museum resides have a much longer history. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the museum was an apartment with truly poor living conditions. The museum was created to show, in a time-capsule kind of way, how poor the living conditions were for the immigrants who lived there.

It's mainly there to help share the story of how difficult life was for immigrants in the past few centuries, and also to show how even now life can be difficult for immigrants. It's certainly worth a visit for one of the most unique and important museums in the city.

5 The Intrepid Museum

Providing insight into the history of the American military and maritime, the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum is a very popular destination for anyone curious about America's huge military history. Located in Hell's Kitchen, this museum has a ton of interesting facts about the military, air force, and navy of the USA. It showcases some truly incredible submarines, aircraft carriers, planes, and even spacecraft! It's a relatively modern museum, being founded in 1982.

6 The Museum of Modern Art

One of the largest museums for modern art, with a huge influence on the current and future state of art, The Museum of Modern Art boasts some of the greatest art pieces of the past century, not to mention over 300,000 books and catalogues. Recently, this fantastic museum has grown even more popular, ranking 15th on the list of most visited art museums in 2021, with well over a million visitors.

It provides an interesting insight into the modern state of art and shows how art has grown from periods like the Renaissance and Medieval Ages. If you're interested in art, chances are you'll learn many new things in this fascinating museum.

7 The Frick Collection

If you enjoy European fine arts, you should certainly pay a visit to one of the best museums for paintings in all of New York City, the Frick Collection. In the early 1900s, it belonged to a wealthy industrialist named Henry Frick and his wife. Henry decided to will his house and his collection to the public as a museum for after he died. When both he and his wife passed away, the house was transformed into the famous museum that you can visit today.

8 New York Transit Museum

In the densely populated and enormous city that is New York, life for the people who live there would be almost impossible without public transit. There happens to be a fascinating history that led to the transportation system you can see today. Although you wouldn't expect it, the New York Transit Museum is actually quite interesting, with all sorts of neat artifacts and models relating to transportation, plus a detailed view of the long history and insight into what may happen to the system in the future.

9 The Met Cloisters
10 The Noguchi Museum
The Contenders
11 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

One of the most memorable and recognizable buildings in New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is even more interesting on the inside. The art museum features many different genres of paintings, from Impressionist to Modern to contemporary, and it is truly one of the best museums in all of North America for art.

It was founded in the late 1930s as a relatively small art museum, but since then its collection has grown alongside the building, which has undergone numerous renovations. In the 2010s, this museum peaked in popularity, some years attracting over a million visitors, and it's still definitely worth a visit.

12 Children's Museum of Manhattan
13 Whitney Museum of American Art

Located in the meat-packing district of Manhattan, the Whitney Museum of American Art has a lot to offer, with some 25,000 various paintings, sculptures, drawings, and artifacts by thousands of artists, much of which comes from the last three centuries. The relatively modern art that perfectly encompasses the evolution of American art makes this an excellent place to visit for anyone interested in American art, which is an interesting blend of many other cultural art styles.

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