Museums

Museum of the City of New York

World City gallery. One of three in the New York at Its Core exhibition. Photo by Filip Wolak courtesy MCNY.

Located the top of Museum Mile at 103rd Street and Fifth Avenue is the Museum of the City of New York. With the only museum that has a comprehensive, 400-year history of New York City from its Dutch origins to the interactive Future City Lab examining the future of the city, the MCNY also offers commentary on present-day issues while dutifully and easily engaging with the past history that has shaped the city today.

Be sure to check out their new exhibition Beyond Suffrage which takes a look at New York women in politics over the last century. With a wide breadth of programming for children to adults, the Museum makes sure you are a well informed native or visitor of the city. It’s open every day of the week from 10 am to 6 pm.

El Museo del Barrio

Photo courtesy El Museo del Barrio 

Directly next door, just one block up on 104th Street and 5th Avenue is El Museo del Barrio. The city’s leading Latino cultural institution, it brings together a beautiful melding of landscape of Latino, Caribbean, and Latin American cultures to pique the interest of all backgrounds.

A cornerstone of the El Barrio, the Museum serves its Latino community well by celebrating the culture that often found itself ignored in mainstream museums. With a collection that spans over 800 years of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino art, it is a valuable resource to the city, but also lets out-of-town visitors explore work not typically seen in New York City museums.

While El Museo’s galleries will be closed until Summer 2018, they continue to hold a variety of programs and are still open to visitors Wednesday to Thursday from 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm, and Friday from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm.