New York City (Fodor's, 2012) - Fodor's [84]
TIP For over a decade, musician Marjorie Eliot (212/781–6595) has been hosting Sunday jazz concerts with prominent local musicians in her apartment (3F) at 555 Edgecombe. The shows run from 4 to 6:30 pm. If you’re in Sugar Hill after 9:30 pm, drop by St. Nick’s Jazz Pub (773 St. Nicholas Ave., near 149th St. | 212/283–9728 | www.stnicksjazzpub.net), a laid-back, tiny basement club that has been a local fixture for ages. Bring some bills to stuff into the tip jar that circulates, grab a drink, and enjoy the late-night jam sessions.
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Main Table of Contents
THE SCENE
Planning
MUSEUMS BY NEIGHBORHOOD
Lower Manhattan and Chinatown
SoHo
East Village and Lower East Side
Chelsea
Murray Hill and the Flatiron District
Midtown
Upper East Side
Upper West Side
Harlem
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Planning
Updated by Samantha Chapnick
Artists have long since called New York home, and for centuries they’ve drawn inspiration from the bustling mash-up of cultures found here. But the city’s museums do more than just display the works of its native sons and daughters—they provide the best the world has to offer at a depth and volume arguably unfound in any other city in the world.
Visitors can easily fill their first half-dozen trips to New York visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Museum of Modern Art, and still be intimidated by what’s left for their next N.Y.C. weekend. A trip down Museum Mile, spanning 23 blocks along 5th Avenue, has nine museums, including the Jewish Museum; El Museo Del Barrio; the Museum of the City of New York; and the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. And the less-hyped but much-loved museums locals would recommend—the Frick Collection, the Whitney, the Cloisters, the Morgan Library, and the Tenement Museum—are virtually unrivaled for the perspectives on old masters, 20th- and 21st-century art, medieval Europe, manuscripts, and the international immigrant experience, respectively.
But enough highbrow. On a different level, New York’s specialty boutique museums offer new perspectives on everyday objects and life. With names like the Museum of Sex, the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA), the Skyscraper Museum, and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, their collections speak for themselves.
Choose museums to visit before you arrive and check Web sites if it’s necessary to purchase advance tickets for special exhibitions. If traveling with kids, ask about family or educator programs for interesting activities—scavenger hunts, puzzles, doodling—that can make the trip more fun.
PLANNING
MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR TIME
Manhattan could be called Museumpalooza—within just one 30-block area (the main stage, aka Museum Mile, 5th Avenue from 82nd Street to 105th Street) there are nine heavy hitters, and within that general vicinity there are a dozen or so merely excellent ones. Trying to see all of this wonderfulness in a week or two is, unfortunately, impossible. Attempting to see all of even one or two of the big museums is equally futile; your feet will go on strike shortly before your brain shuts down with sensory overload.
So consider this your permission slip to think small. Pick one—at most, two—of the bigger museums—the Metropolitan Museum of Art and/or the American Museum of Natural History are the obvious choices, though the Museum of Modern Art is a definite contender—check out their Web sites, and choose just two exhibit halls to tour in depth. For a first visit to the Met, perhaps choose the Egyptian gallery and some of the period rooms