Are you a fan of art museums? The best travel blog is presenting you Manhattan’s museums in a glimpse. New York is full of museums, there are many, and offer the best of what you can see on the Planet. Only think that on one stretch of Fifth Avenue between 82nd and 105th Street, you will see two authentic myths like the Met and the Guggenheim, the Frick Collection and the Neue Gallery, the Museum of the City of New York, the Jewish Museum, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum and the National Academy of Design. And The Whitney is not far away. This is the Museum Mile. In no other city you will find gathered in a single neighborhood such high concentration of great wealth. Even Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island are home to some of the most remarkable museums, but in Manhattan the supply of art and exhibitions reached incredible proportions.
The Magnificent Three: The Met, the Guggenheim and the MoMA
There are three museums in Manhattan that are fantastic, there you will find the best of world art, and in addition to permanent exhibitions is easy to visit some extraordinary shows.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Met occupies a good part of Central Park and is one of the largest and most important museums in the world if you think that two million works of art are divided into nineteen sections. Among the museums of NY, the Met is undoubtedly the largest. More than in the other museums here you have to go with already with an idea of what you want to look and with cleared in your mind the layout of rooms. The Met Museum is an extremely varied one, you will find everything: works of classical antiquity, extraordinary paintings of almost all the great European masters, an important collection of American art and modern. Here is an extraordinary collection of African and Asian works of art and a real Egyptian temple, the Temple of Dendur, illuminated by a large and impressive stained glass window overlooking Central Park, the highlight of the museum.
The Met offers unusual sections, full of important pieces from the four corners of the globe. One of those is the remarkable collection of musical instruments and there is another popular collection dedicated to weapons and armour. There are also several sections of the museum interesting and suitable for children. A separate section of the Met, in the other side of Manhattan, Fort Tryon Park, is known as The Cloisters and is dedicated to medieval Europe, if you visit it (the collection is magnificent) it will seem to you that you have recrossed the ocean. Do not miss the Roof Garden Café, open from May to late autumn, with a really magnificent view of the Central Park and the buildings of Manhattan. It’s not expensive and it’s worth it.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Even before being one of the most important museums in the world in the field of modern and contemporary art, the Guggenheim Museum in New York is a Building. A famous building, one of the icons of New York. I believe that many go there first because of the building and then for what it contains. For others, even the building is “the most important piece of art in the collection.” Frank Lloyd Wright has done a magnificent job. The spiral reversed in white cement to four rings that go up to a glass dome about 30 feet high, break completely with the square lines of the surrounding buildings, it seems almost like a spaceship from outer space landed, and it’s impossible not to notice. Inside the spiral opens onto a vast, bright space station, a long spiral staircase connects the floors and serves as an exhibition space. The walls, leaning slightly off, have the paintings on easels just as where they were created by the artist.
It all began with the private collection of Solomon Guggenheim, a series of new works of avant-garde art that were more imposing in the art world: Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee. Little by little were added several major extraordinary works from private collections. In 1976, with the addition of the Thannhauser collection the museum was enriched with many paintings by Cezanne, Degas, Gauguin, Monnet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh and Picasso.
Today, the collection covers all the major current international art works, from French impressionism to today, with an emphasis on abstract art. There is the extraordinary collection of works by Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Kasimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian. You will see the famous paintings of Rousseau, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and Modigliani. The American painting is represented among others by the work of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol.
There is also a nice video to familiarize yourself with the museum: “Art, Architecture, and Innovation: Celebrating the Guggenheim Museum.” Organised by the Guggenheim!
MoMA: The Museum of Modern Art
Wieland Schmied, a critic, explains: “If you want to know what truly matters in modern art, you must see the MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Sure, there are museums in the world’s largest and richest of the MoMA, but there is no institution in the field of modern art that has more weight and influence. “. The words of the famous director William Rubin: “An unparalleled series of masterpieces that make up a collection overview of the modern world: the only one with the works of all the national schools, and more or less the same issue.” A collection of stunning masterpieces: The Nymphs of Monet, the Cézanne’s Bathers, Starry Night by Van Gogh, Matisse’s The Dance. Also: Max Ernst, Magritte, Dali, Mondrian and Jackson Pollock. The exciting <The Farm> by Joan Miró. More than 70 paintings by Picasso. All these consider this collection one of the most beautiful and important in the world. To visit the museum take advantage of the audio programs with headphones that are already included in the ticket price. The interesting Modern Voice includes 46 works described by critics and experts, useful if you want to listen and learn. The portable players are collected at the entrance. You can also listen to the MoMA Audio Programs from your iPhone or iPodTouch (or other wireless technology) by connecting inside the museum to the MoMa WiFi, which is free of charge.
And what about contemporary art? Well, submit within 30 days your ticket of MoMA to the PS1 Contemporary Art Center and you will have free admission to a large space of exhibition dedicated to contemporary art and is located in Long Island City in Queens, across the Queensboro Bridge.
But of course there are also more exhibitions and museums to visit than these presented to you. Go go art lovers!
By Alba V
Photo: photo 1 mirsasha, photo 2Emilio guerra,photo 3Viviene Gucwa
