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Museums in New York City

Guggenheim Museum, Manhattan, NYC
Guggenheim Museum, Manhattan, NYC

Related Content: Manhattan, NYC — Sightseeing & Attractions

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

The Building
I need a fighter, a lover of space, an agitator, a tester and a wise man. . . . I want a temple of spirit, a monument!
—Hilla Rebay to Frank Lloyd Wright, 1943

In June 1943, Frank Lloyd Wright received a letter from Hilla Rebay, the art advisor to Solomon R. Guggenheim, asking the architect to design a new building to house Guggenheim’s four-year-old Museum of Non-Objective Painting.

The project evolved into a complex struggle pitting the architect against his clients, city officials, the art world, and public opinion. Both Guggenheim and Wright would die before the building’s 1959 completion. The resultant achievement, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, testifies not only to Wright’s architectural genius, but to the adventurous spirit that characterized its founders.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece of modern architecture is home to one of the world’s finest collections of modern and contemporary art. The collection includes masterpieces by Chagall, degas, Kandinsky, Picasso, and van Gogh, as well as special exhibitions featuring internationally renowned artists.

Web: The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation

Metropolitan Museum of Art

A visit to the Metropolitan Museum is like a trip around the world: In formation since 1870, the Metropolitan Museum’s collection now contains more than two million works of art from all points of the compass, ancient through modern times. From ancient statues of Greece and Egypt to modern paintings and sculpture of the 20th Century- 5,000 years of world culture.

Web: Home – The Metropolitan Museum of Art (metmuseum.org)

The Cloisters
A branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Cloisters, situated in a magnificent four-acre setting on a hilltop overlooking the Hudson River in Fort Tryon Park, is the only museum in America dedicated exclusively to Medieval art.
This unique environment remains a place of tranquility and beauty as well as an active center of scholarship, distinguished by the remarkable quality of the works of art it houses.
The Cloisters, the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe, was assembled from architectural elements, both domestic and religious, that date from the twelfth through the fifteenth century.

The building and its cloistered gardens—located in Fort Tryon Park in northern Manhattan—are treasures in themselves, effectively part of the collection housed there.
View fifty highlights from The Cloisters: sculpture, tapestries, illuminated manuscripts, goldsmiths’ and silversmiths’ work, stained glass, enamels, ivories, and more

Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)

The new Museum of Modern Art is designed by acclaimed architect Yoshio Taniguchi, well known in Japan and worldwide for his beautiful designs.
His elegant design for MoMA reflects the vitality of midtown Manhattan and engages the city with a block-through lobby connecting 53 and 54 streets.

The project accommodates MoMA’s growing demand for the display of its preeminent permanent collection as well as for special exhibitions, public programming, and educational and scholarly resources. The redesign significantly expands and reinterprets the midtown facilities, with visitors entering the exhibition area through spacious new skylighted galleries for contemporary art, affirming the importance of the art and artists of today.

The Museum features architecturally distinctive exhibition spaces for displaying masterpieces of modern art, a soaring atrium, and a dramatic 30-foot-high lobby area with an expansive view of the restored Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden that reestablishes the historic garden as the heart of the Museum.
The Museum’s new building complex also houses exhibition galleries and a major center devoted to education and research, reflecting the Museum’s dual priorities of exhibition and education. The spacious lobby provides convenient access to all Museum services, including ticketing, information, coat check, retail, restaurant, theaters, and galleries.

Web: MoMA

American Museum of Natural History

One of the oldest and largest natural history museums anywhere, the American Museum of Natural History is a world-class destination for exploration, discovery, and excitement.

The Museum is renowned for it’s vast collections, cutting-edge technology, and acclaimed special exhibitions and permanent halls.
With the new Rose Center for Earth and Space, Hall of the Universe and completely redesigned Hayden Planetarium, visitors are provided with a field guide to our place in the cosmos.
Learn about our planet, the plants and animals that inhabit it and diverse world cultures throughout the more than 40 other exhibition halls.

Web: American Museum of Natural History | New York City (amnh.org)

American Folk Art Museum

Folk art has a new face and a new home in midtown Manhattan. Designed by Tod Williams/Billie Tsien Architects, the museum celebrates the extraordinary accomplishments of “ordinary” people. The exhibition American Anthem: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum takes a fresh look at aspects of this country’s cultural heritage through the museum’s permanent collections and includes major new acquisitions donated in honor of the opening of the new building.

Web: American Folk Art Museum – New York City

Museum of Arts & Design

The Museum of Arts & Design established in 1956, is the pre-eminent art museum in the United States Specializing in contemporary craft and decorative arts. The Museum is an international resource center for the collection, preservation, supporting emerging and established artists, explore the dynamic relationship among craft, design, architecture, fashion, sculpture and technology.

Web: https://www.madmuseum.org

More Art Museums in NYC

New Museum of Contemporary Art
The New Museum, founded in 1977 and located in the heart of Soho, is the premier destination for contemporary art in New York City. With an annual schedule of dynamic exhibitions, the Museum presents the most innovative and experimental work from around the world.
Debate and discussion about contemporary culture are encouraged through a broad range of educational programs, publications, performances, and new media initiatives. The New Museum offers three floors of innovative contemporary art from around the world as well as a store featuring an extensive selection of art books and designer-created gifts.

Web: New Museum

Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney is the only place in New York where an entire century of American art is always on view. Visit all of our favorites including the masterpieces by Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol. Also, at the Whitney this season: a lifetime of passionate paintings by Jacob Lawrence, and the legendary Whitney Biennial.

Web: Whitney Museum of American Art

The Frick Collection
Internationally celebrated collection of old master paintings sculpture, and decorative artworks housed in the elegant “Gilde Age” residence of steel magnate Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919) make this Fifth Avenue Museum an insider’s favorite in New York.
Artists represented include Vermeer, Rembrandt, Titian, Renoir, Manet, Fragonard, Goya, El Greco, and Holbein.

Web: Frick Madison | The Frick Collection

The Skyscraper Museum

Founded in 1996, The Skyscraper Museum is a private, not-for-profit, educational corporation devoted to the study of high-rise building, past, present, and future. Located in New York City, the world’s first and foremost vertical metropolis, the museum celebrates the city’s rich architectural heritage and examines the historical forces and individuals that have shaped its successive skylines.

On September 10, 2002, the first section of the Viewing Wall at Ground Zero was inaugurated by Governor George Pataki and other dignitaries at ceremonies commemorating the anniversary of 9/11. The Skyscraper Museum collaborated with the Port Authority, the design firm Pentagram, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) to provide the history panels for the Viewing Wall.

The Museum provided the images and captions that allow visitors to better understand the context of the construction of the Twin Towers and the urban history of the Trade Center site.

Web: The Skyscraper Museum

Museum of Sex

How New York City Transformed Sex in America investigates the sexual subcultures of the city’s past and present and explores the means by which they have influenced the development of modern attitudes about sex and sexuality.

Delving into the histories of prostitution, burlesque, birth control, obscenity, fetish and more, the inaugural exhibition of the Museum of Sex, NYC Sex, includes never-before exhibited selections from public and private collections, including materials once confiscated and classified as obscene.

These primary sources of social history — letters, photographs, films and newspapers — reveal how it has been possible in New York, more than in any other American city, to form communities around sex and sexuality.

Web: Museum of Sex | NYC

Paley Center for Media (former Museum of Television and Radio)

The Museum of Television & Radio was founded by William S. Paley in 1975 to collect, preserve, and interpret television and radio programming and to make these programs available to the public.

The Museum has an international collection of over 100,000 programs covering more than seventy-five years of television and radio history including news, public affairs programs and documentaries, performing arts programs,children’s programming, sports, comedy and variety shows, and commercial advertising.
The collection, chosen for its artistic, cultural, and historical significance, is catalogued in a computerized library that is easily accessible to the public.

Each year the Museum, using radio and television programs from the collection, organizes major screening and listening series, festivals,seminars, and education classes that focus on topics of social, historical, popular, or artistic interest. Museum festivals, which include the William S. Paley Television Festival, Television Documentary Festival, Radio Festival, and International Children’s Television Festival, annually celebrate these distinctive fields and recognize new achievement. Seminars feature in-person discussions with writers, producers, directors, actors, journalists, and others involved with landmark programming.

The Museum’s collection grows through contributions from the commercial networks, studios, the Public Broadcasting Service, cable services, local radio and television stations, advertising agencies, Internet sites, individuals, producers, and networks from other countries. No program in the collection may be loaned or reproduced, either in whole or in part.

Web: The Paley Center for Media

National Academy of Design Museum

The National Academy has numbered among it’s members many of America’s most prominent painters, sculptors, architects and printmakers. Founding members included Hudson River school painters Thomas Cole, Rembrandt Peale, and Samuel F.B.Morse.
today, more than 425contemporary artists are members of the Academy. Elected by their peers, all National Academicians contribute examples of their work upon acceptance of the honor, thus building one of the most important and unique collections of American Art.

Web: NAD (nationalacademy.org)

International Center of Photography

Established in 1974, the International Center of Photography (ICP) is New York City’s only museum devoted exclusively to the exhibition, preservation and study of all aspects of photography—from master photographers to newly emerging talent; from photojournalism to the avant-garde; from photographic aesthetics to technique.

Web: International Center of Photography | Photography School and Museum (icp.org)

Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum

Where else in New York can you land a plane on an aircraft carrier via computer simulation, stand nose to nose with some of the fastest jets in the world, crawl through the hatches of a real life, top-secret submarine, experience the defense technology of the future and the past?
The Museum is comprised of the 900-foot long aircraft carrier USS Intrepid; the guided missile submarine, USS Growler; and the Vietnam era destroyer, USS Edson. Free celebrity audio tour and 15 minute film about flight deck operations ‘Intrepid Wings.’

Built in 1943, the USS Intrepid and her crew have a distinguished history of service including tours of duty in both World War II and Vietnam. She also served as NASA prime recovery vessel before being retired in 1974. In 1982 the USS Intrepid began her second career as the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum.

Following a 2 year leave for restoration and renovation, the Intrepid Museum Complex reopened in November 2008 and now boasts new exhibits, interactive elements, newly opened areas of the ship and a completely restored aircraft collection, all along side the former USS Growler submarine and British Airways Concorde.
Her home at Pier 86, open to the public, has also been completely renovated and now features a welcoming, park-like atmosphere.

The new Intrepid Museum is a unique journey filled with spectacular interactive exhibits and virtual, multi-sensory technology. The Intrepid Museum is a dynamic adventure for visitors of all ages and offers group packages, member benefits, birthday parties, special event packages and educational programs. Located at 12th Avenue and 46th Street, Intrepid is easy to get to by mass transit, car or water taxi.

Intrepid is open every day except Mondays through March 31, 2009, then daily through September 30, 2009.

Facts About Concorde

The fastest Atlantic crossing by any Concorde took only 2 hours, 52 minutes and 59 seconds. This record-breaking plane, Concorde Alpha-Delta, is the very same plane housed at the Intrepid Museum.

Her cruising altitude is 60,000 feet, her top speed Mach 2.04, and due to friction heating, Concorde expands approximately eight inches during flight. Even today, more than 32 years after the start of Concorde’s commercial service, she remains the fastest and highest-flying airliner in existence. The development of Concorde began in the early 1960s and officially concluded with her entry into service in 1976. Concorde is one of the finest examples of aviation engineering capable of flying at extreme altitudes and speed.

Concorde is powered by four Rolls-Royce/SNECMA Olympus Mk. 610-14-28 engines. Each engine produces 38,050 pounds of thrust; this would propel the aircraft to her maximum operating speed of Mach 2.04. In order to keep the aircraft light, and keep the cost of production down, Concorde’s fuselage and wings are constructed of aluminum. At full speed and cruising altitude, despite outside temperatures of -67° Fahrenheit (-55° Celsius), Concorde’s skin would heat up to 260.6°F (127°C) at the nose, 196°F-208°F (91°C-98°C) on the fuselage and wings. Concorde carries between 90 and 100 passengers, and has a range of 3,900 nautical miles.

The specific aircraft located at the Intrepid, Sea, Air & Space Museum is registered under designation G-BOAD, and is commonly referred to as “Alpha Delta.” The aircraft itself has a very interesting history.

Manufactured under the serial number 100-010, she is the production variant 102. She flew for the first time on August 25, 1976 from Filton, England, and was delivered to British Airways (BA) on December 6, 1976.

In 1977, a deal was worked out to operate a route from London to Bahrain to Singapore in partnership with Singapore Airlines; however this deal ran into serious difficulties and did not last for long. During some of the time the route was in operation, G-BOAD was the only BA Concorde to operate under two airlines. She was painted BA colors on one side, and Singapore Airlines colors on the other.

During 1979, “Alpha-Delta” was to see service with Braniff Airline under a lease agreement with BA. Under this agreement, BA operated the aircraft on the London to Washington route while Braniff Airline operated the aircraft on the Washington to Dallas route. When the arrangement ceased, the aircraft was re-registered G-BOAD on June 19, 1980.

On February 7, 1996, “Alpha Delta” made the fastest Atlantic crossing of a Concorde, taking just 2 hours, 52 minutes and 59 seconds. During her career, G-BOAD flew 23,397 hours, made 8,406 landings and underwent 7,010 supersonic cycles. The final flight of “Alpha Delta” took place on November 10, 2003. The aircraft was de-registered on May 4, 2004.

Statistics:
Max. Cruise Speed: 1,350 mph (Mach 2.04)
Cruising Altitude: 60,000’
Max. Takeoff Weight: 408,000 lbs
Range: 4,143 miles
Length: 203’-9”
Wingspan: 83’-8”
Height: 37’-1”
Engines: Four Rolls Royce/SNECMA Olympus 593’s
Flight Crew: Two pilots, one flight engineer
Cabin Crew: Six
Passengers: 100
Aircraft Cost: $152,000,000 (1976 dollars)
Transatlantic Fare: $6,000
First Prototype Flight: March 2, 1969
Entered Service: January 21, 1976
Passengers Flown: More than 2.5 million
Built In: Toulose, France and Filton, England

Facts About the Growler

First opened to the public at the Museum in 1989, the Growler, SSG 577 is the only intact strategic diesel powered submarine that fired nuclear missiles open to the public anywhere in the world. The Growler offers Museum visitors a firsthand look at life aboard a submarine and a close-up inspection of the once “top-secret” missile command center. Access is available to the various compartments as they were used during operations.

Constructed in 1958 and on active duty for only six years, the Growler remains in remarkable shape. Growler carried and launched the 56-foot-long Regulus missile. After decommissioning, Growler was placed in the Inactive Reserve Fleet, and the Navy decided to use her as a torpedo test target for nuclear attack submarines. Fortunately, these tests were never conducted. Instead, through the efforts of Zachary Fisher and by an act of Congress, Growler was assigned to become part of the Intrepid Museum.

Statistics
Length: 317’
Beam: 28’
Speed: 12 knots submerged, 19 knots surfaced
Diving Depth: 600’
Displacement: 3500 tons
Endurance: 2 days submerged, 72 days on patrol
Crew: 105-115
Armament: 15 Torpedoes, 4 Regulus I or Regulus II missiles
Fuel: 142,000 gallons of diesel

History of Intrepid Museum

The Intrepid Foundation was founded by Zachary Fisher who rescued the USS Intrepid from scrapping. He believed in creating a place to honor our nation’s heroes. Zachary Fisher was a prominent figure in the New York real estate community and a major philanthropic benefactor for the men and women in the United States Armed Forces, as well as numerous other not-for-profit organizations.

In 1978, he founded the Intrepid Museum Foundation to save the historic and battlescarred aircraft carrier Intrepid from the scrap yard. Four years of involvement with the Foundation resulted in his spearheading the opening of the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum in New York City, now the world’s largest naval museum.

In 1982, the same year as the Museum’s opening, Mr. Fisher established the Zachary and Elizabeth M. Fisher Armed Services Foundation. Through the Foundation, he made significant contributions to the families of the victims of the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. Since then, the Foundation has made contributions of $25,000 to numerous military families who have lost loved ones under tragic circumstances. In 1990, Mr. and Mrs. Fisher began the Fisher House program, dedicating more than $20 million to the construction of comfort homes for families of hospitalized military personnel. Thirty-eight Fisher Houses now operate at military bases and at several Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers throughout the nation. More than 153,000 days of lodging are provided by Fisher Houses every year, saving families an estimated $5 million annually. Since the program’s inception, more than 100,000 families have stayed in Fisher Houses.

In 1998, Mr. Fisher received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton in honor of his wide-ranging contributions on behalf of the young men and women in the US Armed Forces. He also received the Presidential Citizens Medal, the Horatio Alger Award, the President’s Volunteer Action Award, the Senior Civilian Award from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense, and the top civilian awards from each branch of the military. In December 1999, the United States Congress conferred upon Zachary the title of “Honorary Veteran of the United States,” only the second American to receive such recognition (Bob Hope was the first). Separately, Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Bill Clinton, as well as Margaret Thatcher and the late Yitzak Rabin, recognized Mr. Fisher for his support of charitable organizations throughout the United States. Mr. Fisher’s devotion to his country can be summed up in the inscription on the Presidential Plaque presented to him by President Reagan: “To the tireless, dedicated work of many Americans, the Intrepid will serve as an inspiration. One man deserves special tribute Zachary Fisher, a patriotic American who never forgot and cares so much.”

Web: The Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum (intrepidmuseum.org)

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