Education in New York City - Museums

Museums

New York City is home to hundreds of cultural institutions and historic sites, many of which are internationally known.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the world's largest and most important art museums, located on the eastern edge of Central Park . It also comprises a building complex known as "The Cloisters" in Fort Tryon Park at the north end of Manhattan Island overlooking the Hudson River which features medieval art. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is often considered a rival to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Brooklyn Museum is the second largest art museum in New York and one of the largest in the United States. One of the premier art institutions in the world, its permanent collection includes more than one-and-a-half million objects, from ancient Egyptian masterpieces to contemporary art, and the art of many other cultures.

There are many smaller important galleries and art museums in the city. Among these is the Frick Collection, one of the preeminent small art museums in the United States, with a very high-quality collection of old master paintings housed in 16 galleries within the former mansion of steel magnate Henry Clay Frick. The collection features some of the best-known paintings by major European artists, as well as numerous works of sculpture and porcelain. It also has furniture, enamel, and carpets.

The Jewish Museum of New York was first established in 1904, when the Jewish Theological Seminary received a gift a 26 Jewish ceremonial art objects by Judge Mayer Sulzberger. The museum now boasts a collection 28,000 objects including paintings, sculpture, archaeological artifacts, and many other pieces important to the preservation of Jewish history and culture.

Founded in 1969 by a group of Puerto Rican artists, educators, community activists and civic leaders, El Museo del Barrio is located at the top of Museum Mile in East Harlem, a neighborhood also called 'El Barrio'. Originally, the museum was a creation of the Nuyorican Movement and Civil Rights Movement, and primarily functioned as a neighborhood institution serving Puerto Ricans. With the increasing size of New York's Latino population, the scope of the museum is expanding.

The American Museum of Natural History is a landmark of Manhattan's Upper West Side, with a staff of more than 1,200. The museum sponsors over 100 special field expeditions each year. The Museum is famous for its habitat groups of African, Asian and North American mammals, for the full-size model of a Blue Whale suspended in the hall of oceans, for the 62-foot (19 m) Haida carved and painted war canoe from the Pacific Northwest, and for the "Star of India", the largest blue sapphire in the world. The circuit of a complete floor is devoted to vertebrate evolution, including the world-famous dinosaur replicas. The Museum's anthropological collections are also outstanding: Halls of Asian Peoples and of Pacific Peoples, of Man in Africa, Native Americans in the United States collections, general Native American collections, and collections from Mexico and Central America.

One of the premiere botanical gardens in the United States, the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx was modeled after the Royal Botanic Gardens in London. With 48 different gardens and plant collections, nature enthusiasts can easily spend a day admiring the serene cascade waterfall, wetlands, a 50 acre (200,000 m²) tract of old-growth oaks, American beeches, cherry, birch, tulip and white ash trees — some more than two centuries old. Garden highlights include an 1890s-vintage, wrought-iron framed, "crystal-palace style" greenhouse; the Peggy Rockefeller memorial rose garden (originally laid out by Beatrix Farrand in 1916); a Japanese rock garden; a 37 acre (150,000 m²) conifer collection, extensive research facilities including a propagation center, 50,000-volume library, and a herbarium archive of hundreds of thousands of botanical specimens dating back more than a century. At the heart of the Garden are 40 acres (162,000 m²) of virgin woodlands which represent the last stretch of the original forest which covered all of New York City before the arrival of European settlers in the 17th century. The forest itself is split by the Bronx River and includes a riverine canyon and rapids, and along its shores sits the landmark Lorillard snuff-grinding mill dating back to the 1840s.

The Brooklyn Children's Museum is a general purpose museum in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Founded in 1899, it was the first museum in the world to cater specifically to children. The museum is currently undergoing extensive renovation and expansion.

The New York Hall of Science is a hands-on science and technology center with more than 400 exhibits exploring biology, chemistry, and physics. It is located in one of the few remaining structures of the 1964 New York World's Fair.

The Rubin Museum of Art is a museum dedicated to the collection, display, and preservation of the art of the Himalayas and surrounding regions, especially that of Tibet. It is located at 150 West 17th Street between the Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue) and Seventh Avenue in the Chelsea, Manhattan, New York City. The Education Department at the Rubin Museum of Art fosters a deeper experience with the art of the Himalayas through close observation, discovery, thinking, and emotion and encourage visitors to consider the interplay between art and culture, and to make personal connections to visual art through meaningful interactions.