Two days in New York anchored by the three most important art museums in the Western Hemisphere — the Met, MoMA, and the Guggenheim — plus the 9/11 Memorial Museum for historical context. This is the museum trip New York does better than any other city on earth.
Museum Mile on Fifth Avenue along Central Park's eastern edge has the highest concentration of world-class museums in any American city. The Met and the Guggenheim are within a 10-minute walk of each other.
Arrive at opening (10am). The Egyptian Wing first — the Temple of Dendur is a complete 15 BC Egyptian temple relocated stone by stone from the Nile valley and reassembled inside a purpose-built glass atrium. Then the Greek and Roman galleries, then the European paintings (Vermeer, Rembrandt, El Greco). The Met's roof garden (seasonal, May–October) has rotating sculpture installations and the best view of Central Park from any building.
Frank Lloyd Wright's only major New York building and one of the most important works of 20th-century American architecture. The continuous spiral ramp from the ground floor to the skylight at the top is the exhibit — the art hangs along the spiral, but the building itself is the reason to be here. The permanent collection is strong in Kandinsky and Impressionism. Budget 90 minutes.
MoMA in Midtown for the morning — the definitive modern art collection in America. The 9/11 Memorial Museum in the afternoon, which requires a different kind of preparation.
MoMA holds the definitive collection of modern and contemporary art — Van Gogh's The Starry Night, Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Monet's Water Lilies triptych, Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans, and Pollock's One. The 2019 expansion increased gallery space by 40% and improved the contemporary collection substantially. Tickets are $30/adult. Budget 2.5 hours.
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