How to Visit New York City's Best Museums

With over 100 museums, New York City has something for everybody. Whether you prefer the typical art museum or want something more exciting, like a museum build on a submarine, you are sure to find it here. Unless you’re planning on staying around for weeks, however, you will need to work out a plan to visit the best museums in just a few days.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Dedicate a full day to explore the Museum of Natural History. With floors and exhibits that range from the cultural anthropology halls to the 90-foot-long rainforest diorama, this is the one museum you can’t miss when visiting New York City. Pay special attention to the dinosaur exhibit, featuring some of the most impressive skeletons ever recovered, including a Tyrannosaurus rex, a mammoth and others.

2. Spend an evening at the Hayden Planetarium and Rose Center for Earth and Space, just across the street. Aside from the magnificent show, which includes special effects such as a shaking ground, you can also visit the permanent exhibits of fossils, the history of the universe and a collection of geological specimens that are as old as 2.7 billion years.

3. Visit the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), a 630,000-square-foot building in on 53rd Street. Even if you’re not an art lover, the museum is still a must see because of some classics such as Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night and Paul Cézanne’s The Bather. The museum also offers an impressive collection of drawings, photography, film and sculpture works.

4. Make some time to visit a couple of New York City’s quirky museums, such as the Museum of Transit, which is set in a real (but no longer working) subway station, and features a collection of subway cars dating all the way back to the 19th century. Other unusual museums to see include The Tenement Museum (about the history of immigration), the Alice Austen House Museum, the Guggenheim Museum SoHo (famous for its architecture) and the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum.

5. Spend a day at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. Housed on board of a 900 foot-long aircraft carrier, the museum features everything from a collection of planes to a flight simulator to the submarine USS Growler. Aside from educational exhibits, you can also see vehicles captured during the Iraq war and a series of weapons and instruments used onboard.

6. Don’t pay full price. Most of the biggest NYC museums operate on a “pay-as-you-wish” basis, although they also offer a suggested donation price. You don’t need any special membership cards to gain entrance either.

Tips & Warnings

• Bring your camera along. Most museums allow photography, as long as you don’t use a flash.

Resources

• Listing of all major NYC’s museums