Among many types of Museum, I love visiting contemporary Art, and or unique museum buildings. During our 10-days visit to New York City, me and my friend visited several beautiful museums in New York City. My favourite Museum from all New York Museum is Guggenheim Museum, and i love it because of the simplicity of the art displayed and the quirky building design. These are just a few of many beautiful museum we got a chance to visit (and or planned to visit) from South to North Manhattan:
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1. 9/11 Memorial and Museum
The 9/11 Memorial honours 3000 people who were killed in the September 11th 2001 World Trade Centre attack and February 26th 1993 and recognized those who survived the attack and risk their lives to help others. The 9/11 Museum visualizes the aftermath of the attack, the history, and display the remnants of what used to be World Trade Center. The Museum’s core exhibitions are located inside the footprints of the North and South Towers. The broken firetruck, newspaper clip, subway tickets are among artifacts recovered from the ground zero. In total, there are 70,000 artifacts that documents the fate of victims, survivors, and the responders.
The 9/11 museum opens Thursday and Friday from 12 to 7 p.m., and Saturday to Monday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission to the museum is free.
To me, who lives outside US, the museum helped me understand the situations and the impact caused by the horrible terror attacks. It also inspired me to see those who survived, the heroic efforts by the firefighters, policemen, and all the volunteers.
2. Whitney Museum of American Art
This beautiful museum’s location is at 99 Gansevoort Street, lower Manhattan at Meatpacking district. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, a sculptor, built this museum in 1930. She was a wealthy and prominent American Socialite (source: Wikipedia). The focus of exhibitions in Whitney Museum is contemporary art and works by living artists. The museum claims to be consistently purchasing works within the year they were created. Permanent collection of this museum includes 24,000 works created by more than 3500 artists in United States between 20th to 21st centuries. The unique building of Whitney Museum is a creation of architect Renzo Piano.
Whitney Museum opens from Monday to Sunday with the exception of Tuesday and Wednesday. It Opens from 11:30 am to 6 pm on Monday and Thursday, from 12 pm to 6 pm on Saturday and Sunday, and from 1:30 pm to 9 pm on Friday. The entrance fee is 25 USD for adult.
When you visit this museum, don’t forget to go up to its highest level, where you can see the manhattan skyscraper spread before you. Spend at least three hours for the best experience in this museum.
3. The Morgan Library and Museum
in 1924, JP Morgan Jr. gave his father’s private library to the Public. Not only a library, the late JP Morgan was also a collector of antiquities, arts, drawings, and artifacts. What we see nowadays used to be a private collection of JP Morgan. He started collecting as early as 1890, and the building was built between 1902 to 1906. The building itself is of Italian Renaissance Style. Among the rooms in the museum, my favourite is the Mr Morgan’s Library and Mr. morgan’s Study.
4. The Museum of Modern Art
We planned to visit this New York museum before going to Guggenheim Museum and after going to Morgan Library and Museum. However, we went too long at Morgan’s and we had no time to visit this Museum. So, we skipped it and going to Guggenheim instead.
MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) was established at 1929 with the first building location was at Manhattan’s Heckscher Building on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. Within the next ten years, the museum moved to three more locations. In 1939, the headquarters was moved to 53rd street. In 1997, the museum had major renovation that involved Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi. It was reopened in 2004 to public (source: Wikipedia)
Museum of Modern art is located at 11 West 53 Street, Manhattan. It opens from 10:30 am to 5:30 pm seven days a week. The admission fee is 25 USD for adult.
5. American Museum of National History
Several major box office movies were shot in this Museum. Some of them are “The night at the museum”, “The devils wears Prada”. Some tv series also use this museum as their movie locations in one or few of their episodes such as “How I met your mother”, “Mad about you”, “Friends”, and many other. The American Museum of National History is scientific and cultural museum.
AMNH was founded at 1869, and the exhibitions focuses on Human cultures, natural world, as well as universe. Some of their exhibitions are divided into mammal hall, biodiversity and environmental hall, human origin and cultural halls, Earth and planetary science halls, and several more. My favourite is the Rose for Earth and Space hall. It has spiral pathway called The Harriet and Robert Heilbrunn Cosmic Pathway. It is a 360-foot-long path that spirals from the exit of the Hayden Big Bang Theatre to the base of the Hayden Sphere, laying out the 13-billion-year history of the universe. One’s stride is measured in millions of years, and the relative blink of an eye that is the human era is depicted at the end of the pathway as the thickness of a single human hair. (source: amnh official website).
My other favourite hall is the mammals hall and Human Origin and cultural Halls. Its exhibitions reminded me a lot with The Night at the museum movie. The Hall of Human Origins explores the evolutionary of the human family, while the Cultural Halls examine the cultures of Asia, Africa, North and South America, and the Pacific.
6. Guggenheim Museum
Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, or shortly named Guggenheim museum is located at Fifth Avenue. Quoting from its Website, it “collects, preserves, and interprets modern and contemporary art, and explores ideas across cultures through dynamic curatorial and educational initiatives and collaborations”. Guggenheim Museum are also available in Bilbao, Abu Dhabi, and Venice.
The New York Guggenheim was built at 1939. During that time, the design drew critics that says the design will overshadow the exhibitions in the museum, to what the architect reply that the building and the painting will form beautiful symphony
To me personally, the first thing I love is the architecture of the Museum. Its spiral dome is UFO like and gives you unique point of view in every point at the circular walkway, and at every level. It gives the sense of new hope, new era, and alien at the same time. The painting exhibition, I forgot on what level it was, portrayed minimalism and abstract on a large space. It gave me eerie and breezy tone in the museum.
If a building can give you particular sense of awe, mystery, and happiness, It’s Guggenheim. And I count if as one of the best thing to do in NYC. The entrance ticket costs USD 25 and the ticket can be purchased online. It Opens from Thursday to Monday from 11 am to 6 pm.
