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 building is a fragment of a much larger idea. McKim, Mead & White drew a master plan roughly four times the size of what was actually built between 1893 and 1927; only the northern wings and a single light court were completed, which is why the Eastern Parkway facade feels like a wing searching for its building. The grand front staircase was removed in 1936-37 and replaced with ground-level doors, and in 2004 a glass entrance pavilion carried on four metal pylons was added, so the approach now reads as three centuries arguing with each other. What survived of the plan is still large enough that the interior never feels like a compromise.
The Egyptian holdings are the collection's spine and are counted among the largest and finest in the United States, with galleries of more than 1,200 objects and particular depth in Predynastic, New Kingdom and Late Period material. Visitors who know the museum only by reputation as a contemporary venue are often surprised to find that its scholarly weight sits four thousand years earlier.
The American decorative arts are the other quiet strength. The Jan Martense Schenck House, a Dutch colonial farmhouse of about 1675-76 from Flatlands, was dismantled and reassembled indoors as a period room — a two-room box with a pitched roof, built by a man wealthy enough to co-own a local grain mill. The Luce Center for American Art on the fifth floor, opened in 2001, puts thousands of works in visible storage rather than editing them down. Outside, a sculpture garden opened in April 1966 collects architectural ornament salvaged from demolished New York buildings.
The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art opened in March 2007 and installed Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party as a permanent work, ending a long stretch in which the piece had no fixed home.
200 Eastern Pkwy, Brooklyn, NY 11238 · Official site ↗
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet (52,000 m2), the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Flatbush, and Park Slope neighborhoods of Brooklyn, the museum's Beaux-Arts building was designed by McKim, Mead & White.
This background summary is from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0. The editorial on this page is ours.