11 museums
No ranking, just the list — the big names and a few quieter ones, across every borough that has one. Most offer pay-what-you-wish hours; check each site before you go.
The Met
Founded in 1870, the Met holds about 1.5 million works spanning 5,000 years, including one of the largest collections of Egyptian art outside Cairo.
The museum is enormous — pick two or three wings rather than trying to see everything in one visit, and reserve timed tickets online in advance during busy seasons.
MoMA
Founded in 1929 as the first museum in Manhattan devoted to exhibiting European modernism, MoMA's collection includes Van Gogh's The Starry Night, acquired in 1941, and Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.
Reserve timed tickets online in advance, especially on weekends and in summer, since walk-up lines can be long.
AMNH
Chartered in 1869, the American Museum of Natural History holds tens of millions of specimens and artifacts across 45 permanent exhibition halls.
The complex spans multiple connected buildings and can easily take a full day to see properly, so pick up a map at the entrance and plan a route in advance.
The Guggenheim
Frank Lloyd Wright's last major work, the Guggenheim opened in 1959 with a spiraling ramp gallery that lets visitors view art along one continuous descending path.
The building itself is part of the experience — many visitors ride the elevator to the top and walk down the spiral ramp rather than climbing up.
The Whitney
Sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney founded the museum in 1930 after the Met turned down her collection of American art; its survey of contemporary American work has run since 1932, in its present all-media biennial form since 1973.
The museum moved into a new Renzo Piano-designed building in the Meatpacking District in 2015, with multiple outdoor terraces worth budgeting extra time for.
Brooklyn Museum
The Beaux-Arts building, designed by McKim, Mead & White, was originally planned to be the largest art museum in the world, and at 560,000 square feet it is still the city's second-largest museum building.
It's a short subway ride from Manhattan and, even during major exhibitions, is typically far less crowded than the big Manhattan museums.
The Frick
Housed in the Gilded Age Fifth Avenue mansion Henry Clay Frick built between 1912 and 1914, the collection includes three of the roughly three dozen paintings known to survive by Vermeer.
The museum occupies a former private residence, so galleries are more intimate and the layout is less predictable than at larger art museums — allow extra time to navigate.
MCNY
Founded in 1923 to document the city's history, the museum holds the Stettheimer dollhouse, whose miniature gallery contains an original work by Marcel Duchamp.
It's smaller and generally far less crowded than the major Fifth Avenue art museums, making it a good stop for visitors who want NYC history without long lines.
NY Historical Society
Founded in 1804, it is New York City's oldest museum, predating the Metropolitan Museum of Art by nearly seven decades, with a collection of over 1.6 million artifacts.
In addition to its galleries, it operates a public research library, worth checking in advance if you want to dig into a specific piece of city history during your visit.
Intrepid Museum
Set aboard the USS Intrepid, a World War II aircraft carrier commissioned in 1943, the museum also displays a retired Concorde and the submarine USS Growler on the same pier.
Much of the museum is outdoors on the flight deck and involves stairs and ladders between decks, so dress for the weather and wear comfortable shoes.
Moving Image
Opened in 1988 in a former building of the historic Astoria Studios complex, it was the first museum in the United States devoted solely to the art, history and technology of film, television and video.
The core Behind the Screen exhibition is built around interactive experiences and working demonstrations rather than passive galleries, so plan for more hands-on time than a typical museum visit.