Manhattan Museums

[ablarc]

Note: The poll question in its entirety should read: "Which of these smaller museums have you visited? Check all that you’ve personally been to."


MANHATTAN MUSEUMS

Manhattan’s a great place for museums. Everybody and his uncle has seen the Metropolitan, the Natural History Museum and MoMA, but not everyone has been to all of the somewhat smaller museums. Here’s a selection of ten of these, all of them dealing to varying degrees with art.

Guggenheim Museum
Whitney Museum
The Cloisters
Frick Collection
Morgan Library
New York Historical Society
Museum of the City of New York
Cooper Hewitt Museum of Design
Skyscraper Museum
Museum of the American Indian

Too numerous for the poll, there are plenty of other interesting Manhattan museums, such as the Dahesh and the Museum of Contemporary Art, soon to be in a new building.

Most polls want your opinion. Here the poll proper just wants facts: which ones have you personally visited?

Please also post your opinions and observations.

Outer borough museums may be covered in a future thread.

[Luca]

Done the Dahesh too...
BTW, a hadny lsit, Abalrc. How about thge folk art musueum inmmidtown, horrible building, interesting content.

[Punzie]

Ablarc- You'd like our opinions and observations, but for those of us who go to museums all the time... we just have too many things to say! Is there any specific type of observation you'd like us to make?

[ablarc]

Ablarc- You'd like our opinions and observations, but for those of us who go to museums all the time... we just have too many things to say! Is there any specific type of observation you'd like us to make?
Well, after a recent visit to the re-imagineered MoMA, I wrote a little review that went spectacularly awry(http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10836), so I'm the wrong person to ask for guidance. I posted what I thought was a piece on how the museum seemed to me to have lost its power to influence people deeply (for good or bad), but it rapidly devolved into a discussion of obesity and all manner of things I had no interest in topicalizing.

Best I can suggest: write what you think, prepare to be misunderstood, and consider yourself fortunate if you're not.

Glad to hear you go to museums all the time. If you've been doing that for a long time you've probably noticed the massive uptick in attendance and the consequent evolution of reasons to go (food and gift purchases up, solitary contemplation down). I'd be interested to hear your impressions of the new MoMA.

I also posted some pics of the new Morgan Library, which I don't like. http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3412&page=4&highlight=morgan. Do you remember it from when it was musty and deserted? You could spend an hour deciphering a page of Bronte. I bet Bob Dylan is really packing them in.

Seems museums have to trade in depth for flash if they want to be popular. So it has always gone, I guess. Popular culture: by one definition of culture, an oxymoron.

[ZippyTheChimp]

I've been to all those listed, except the Skyscraper Museum - the closest to my residence.

I've not been inside the Morgan since the renovation.

General comment: I enjoyed museums more when they were less popular - I guess an indefensible attitude.

[pianoman11686]

It's interesting, when considering the context of this forum, that the Skyscraper Musuem has the lowest percentage of attendance so far.

[Schadenfrau]

I've been to all but the Skyscraper Museum and the Museum of the American Indian. I think the Neue Galerie is more important than a few of the places on that list, as is El Museo Del Barrio.

[ablarc]

I enjoyed museums more when they were less popular - I guess an indefensible attitude.

Oh g'wan, you don't have to cave to prefab wisdom.

[ZippyTheChimp]

The attitude is intact. The grumbling is internal.

I'm mellowing.

[ablarc]

The prefab wisdom I was referring to was that your attitude is indefensible. I don't think it is; in fact I share your view that museums were better before they were mobbed.

[BPC]

I've been to all those listed, except the Skyscraper Museum - the closest to my residence.

you're not missing much

[lofter1]

Depending upon the exhibit the SS Museum can be worth the trip -- although it is a fairly high-priced hour.

One reason I like the Museum of the American Indian: it's FREE (and rarely very busy). Plus the building itself is fantastic.

I always tell friends / family to go there as part of their jaunt in the Battery Park area.

[ablarc]

...I like the Museum of the American Indian... the building itself is fantastic.
Cass Gilbert, 1902-07.

[pianoman11686]

Got any pics?

[ablarc]

Got any pics?
http://www.nyc-architecture.com/LM/LM012-ALEXANDERHAMILTONCUSTOMHOUSE.htm

[pianoman11686]

Thanks, although I was hoping you had taken some pictures of it. :)

Good to see that they found another use for a great building.

[ablarc]

I'm hoping for a Beaux-Arts Revival.

[pianoman11686]

But where will they find people to sculpt?

[ablarc]

^ Why New York of course. All those artists and potential artists...

Up on 111th Street they recruited kids right off the streets of Harlem.

[Luca]

Oh, another small museum (quite small) which really deserves a viewing: the Forbes Foundation has a small museum of toy soldiers and toy battleships. Unique in its kind, very ver nice. I highly recommend it.

[ablarc]

For what it's worth: after twenty responses, the poll shows the average Wired New York poll respondent has visited 5.2 of the ten museums on the poll.

[ZippyTheChimp]

you're not missing muchI suspected as much.

I'm glad the Frick Collection is not at the bottom, or top, of the list.

[ablarc]

26 respondents have checked 129 museum visits. The average forumer has visited 5 out of 10 museums on this list.

[pianoman11686]

Well, I finally managed to visit the Frick Collection over the holiday weekend. A true New York gem-of-a-building, with some very impressive artwork. Think of a sample of the best works from the Met's European collection - El Greco, Titian, Rembrant, Vermeer, Renoir, Bellini, Degas, Monet - and more. Definitely worth a stop, if not for the artwork, then at least to see how a true "robber baron" lived in the early 20th century.

So, can I change my vote now? :D

[ablarc]

Well, I finally managed to visit the Frick Collection over the holiday weekend. A true New York gem-of-a-building, with some very impressive artwork. Think of a sample of the best works from the Met's European collection - El Greco, Titian, Rembrant, Vermeer, Renoir, Bellini, Degas, Monet - and more. Definitely worth a stop, if not for the artwork, then at least to see how a true "robber baron" lived in the early 20th century.
The art in the Frick is so good that if you selected its twenty best paintings and did the same for the Metropolitan, an art historian would be hard pressed to declare a winner. The Met has thousands more lesser paintings, however.