The Best Under-the-Radar Museums in New York City
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Of the 10 most-visited museums in the world, two are in New York City. But you won't find those museums on this list—at least not the galleries and exhibitions for which they are best known—because even in one of the best museum cities on the planet, you can still find some hidden gems. There are more than 170 museums to visit across the five boroughs, and while major institutions like the Metropolitan Museum on the Upper East Side attract acclaim, it's worth taking a trip north to the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan to visit its other branch, the Met Cloisters, in Fort Tryon Park. Another hidden gem that many might not realize is open to the public is the Grolier Club, a private, book-focused society that welcomes non-members to visit its galleries free of charge. There's also the Merchant's House Museum in the East Village, a well-preserved time capsule offering a look into how a wealthy New York family lived in the 19th century. Below, a look at those institutions and others in New York that are worth a detour from Museum Mile.
Neue Galerie
This Upper East Side museum, whose name translates to "New Gallery" in German, is devoted entirely to early twentieth-century German and Austrian art and design. It was established by art dealer Serge Sabarsky and philanthropist Ronald S. Lauder in 2001, in a Beaux-Arts townhouse designed by the architectural firm Carrère & Hastings and once occupied by Grace Vanderbilt (Selldorf Architects, the firm that is currently renovating the Frick Collection, oversaw the conversion to a museum). Among the notable works in the collection is Gustav Klimt's striking Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I from 1907. Lauder acquired the painting, fondly known as the "Woman in Gold," for the museum at a then-record price of $135 million in 2006. There's more to see besides the art too. Don't leave without popping into Cafe Sabarsky, which redefines the concept of a museum cafe. With period objects, furniture, and fabric, the space harkens back to the Viennese cafes of the late 19th and early 20th century that attracted artists and writers. The menu includes traditional specialties like wiener schnitzel and goulash, and the Sachertorte—a classic Viennese dark chocolate cake with a layer of apricot jam—is not to be missed.
1048 Fifth Ave, New York, NY 10028
American Museum of Natural History
While this museum might be best known for its fossil halls and 94-foot-long, 21,000-pound model of a blue whale in the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life, the American Museum of Natural History also boasts one of the world's premier collections of gems and minerals. Located on the first floor, the Allison and Roberto Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals includes thousands of rare gems, mineral specimens, and pieces of jewelry. The galleries, which reopened in 2021 after a $32 million redesign, illustrate how the diversity of mineral species arose on the planet, how scientists classify and study them, and how we use them as both jewels and tools. Among the collection, which includes more than 5,000 specimens from 98 countries, is the Brazilian Princess (shown here), a 221-facet, 9.5-pound pale blue topaz that once was the largest cut gem in the world.
200 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024
The Morgan Library & Museum
What began as the personal library of J. Pierpont Morgan, the Morgan Library & Museum is now a research library and museum with a collection of more than 350,000 objects. As it was known during his lifetime, Mr. Morgan's library was built by Charles McKim of the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White between 1902 and 1906 next to Morgan's New York residence at Madison Avenue and 36th Street. The library included Morgan's collection of historical manuscripts, books, and old master prints and drawings. Eleven years after Morgan's death, his son, J.P. Morgan, Jr., opened the library to scholars and the public in 1924, and over the years since its collection has grown, and its physical footprint has expanded with a Renzo Piano-designed addition completed in 2006. In addition to three copies of the Gutenberg Bible and the original manuscript of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, one of the highlights of the collection is the 12th-century Stavelot Triptych (shown here), which Paul Provost, the founding CEO of Alice Walton's Art Bridges Foundation, calls "one of the greatest objects of medieval art on view in North America."
225 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
The Grolier Club
Founded in 1884, the Grolier Club bills itself as "America’s oldest and largest society for bibliophiles and enthusiasts in the graphic arts." The club is named for Jean Grolier (1489/90-1565), a Renaissance collector known for sharing his library with friends, and its coed membership of approximately eight hundred includes book collectors, dealers, librarians, designers, and others who help to carry on that legacy through lectures and exhibitions that are open to the public free of charge in its ground-floor gallery (shown here). A First-Class Fool: Mark Twain and Humor, on view from January 15 to April 5, 2025, will examine how humorist Samuel Clemens created the public persona of Mark Twain.
47 East 60th St, New York, NY 10022
The New York Historical
The New York Historical was founded as New York's first museum in 1804. It features exhibitions on the history of New York and America, but one of its most compelling aspects is its collection of Tiffany Lamps. One of the largest and most encyclopedic collections of Tiffany Lamps in the world, the group of 100 illuminated lamps is displayed in a fourth-floor gallery. Of particular note are multiple examples of the Dragonfly shade, a c. 1900-1906 Dogwood floor lamp, and a c. 1902 elaborate Cobweb shade on a Narcissus mosaic. Interestingly, a hidden history part of the exhibition offers a look at women's role in the creation of this art. Although Louis C. Tiffany (1848–1933) was the artistic genius behind Tiffany Studios, Clara Driscoll (1861–1944), head of the Women’s Glass Cutting Department from 1892 to 1909, actually designed many of the firm’s notable leaded glass shades.
170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024
The Met Cloisters
The Met Cloisters, a branch of the more well-known museum on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, is America's only museum dedicated exclusively to the art and architecture of the Middle Ages. It opened in 1938 on land overlooking the Hudson River in Fort Tryon Park, which John D. Rockefeller, Jr. developed and donated to the City of New York (Rockefeller also purchased the land on the New Jersey side of the Hudson to preserve the view of the Palisades). The Cloisters takes its name from aspects of medieval cloisters that American sculptor George Grey Barnard acquired in France and moved to New York, where Rockefeller purchased them—forming the origins of the Met Cloisters. Rockefeller and Morgan later donated additional works to the collection, which today includes approximately 5,000 pieces spanning the categories of metalwork, painting, sculpture, and textiles.
99 Margaret Corbin Drive, Fort Tryon Park, New York, NY 10040
American Folk Art Museum
Founded in 1961, the American Folk Art Museum is dedicated to preserving and promoting folk and self-taught artists across time and place. "Candid, genuine, and unexpected" is how the museum describes its role in celebrating the creativity of individuals whose talents have been cultivated mainly through personal experience instead of formal artistic training. The collection includes more than 8,000 objects produced from the 18th century to the present and nearly every continent. One of its current exhibitions, Anything But Simple, features an overview of the Shaker community and its aesthetic, plus drawings made by Shaker women in the mid-19th century that are believed to represent divine messages.
2 Lincoln Square, New York, NY 10023
Merchant's House Museum
The Merchant's House Museum offers a rare opportunity for visitors to learn how a prosperous New York City family lived in the mid-19th century. After purchasing the brick and marble row house in 1835 (three years after it was built), Seabury Tredwell, a wealthy merchant, moved in with his wife, eight children, and four Irish servants. They continued living there for nearly 100 years. The Merchant's House went on to become the first building in Manhattan designated as a landmark under New York City's new landmark law in 1965. Today, five floors of period rooms showcase more than 3,000 of the family's original possessions—including decorative objects and furniture such as a suite of 12 mahogany side chairs attributed to Duncan Phyfe, household goods, and clothes.
29 East 4th St, New York, NY 10003
The Noguchi Museum
Located in Long Island City, Queens, the Noguchi Museum is based in a repurposed 1920s red brick industrial building attached to a concrete pavilion that was designed and built in the 1980s by the American artist Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) in collaboration with Shoji Sadao (1927–2019). Noguchi founded the institution in 1985, making it the first museum in America established, designed, and installed by a living artist to show their own work. The two-story museum includes approximately 27,000 square feet of exhibition space, including a noteworthy sculpture garden.
9-01 33rd Road, Astoria, NY 11106
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