The collectors who founded the American Folk Art Museum subscribed enthusiastically to the notion of a homogenous national heritage, and this was reflected in the art they collected and, consequently, in the gifts they gave to the museum. The collection was launched in 1962 with the gift, appropriately enough, of a gate in the form of an American flag that celebrated the nation’s centennial. In the forty years since, the museum’s collection has continued to grow and evolve and now includes artworks from the seventeenth century through the present. New thoughts about the makeup of American society have expanded collecting goals, but as the “American Anthem” exhibition makes all too clear, the museum still has a long way to go toward remedying a balance weighted heavily in favor of the field’s early interests and directions. In other words, the opening of the new American Folk Art Museum does not suggest that the museum’s collection is “complete” or that things will not continue to change. Like American folk art itself, it merely marks a moment in time, with all its concomitant forces, for us to say this is where we are now, but the journey continues.

The American Folk Art Museum's exhibit "American Anthem” is an unabashed song of praise to the nation, for the simple reason that American folk art is essentially patriotic, whether celebrating national events, decrying the nation’s dark days, or describing personal moments. Refuge, freedom, ingenuity, land of opportunity, these are phrases identified with the mythology of America, and they are ideas indelibly imbedded in America’s vernacular arts.

Over this period of spectacular scientific achievement, the American Museum of Natural History has played a leading role in exploration, discovery, and theoretical advances in the natural sciences. Central to these efforts has been the accumulation of one of the world's great Museum collections. The Museum was a leader in forging new theories on the way we look at cultures, biological organisms, and indeed the very evolution of life. Today, science at the American Museum of Natural History thrives and expands on these earlier accomplishments.

Science areas to explore at the American Museum of Natural History include: The Institute for Comparative Genomics, The Division of Physical Sciences and a new Astrophysics Research Program, The C. V. Starr Natural Science Building, The Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, Anthropology and Cultural Studies, Paleontological Exploration, Vertebrate Zoology, Exploring the Vast Diversity of the Invertebrates, Digitization of the Library Collections.

The above are only a sample of the initiatives currently underway at the Museum that is intended to define the institution's leadership in 21st-century science. This is a time of unprecedented disclosure of the secrets of the gene, the biota, and the history and workings of the earth, the planets, and the universe. Technologies in computation, imaging, genomics, and comparative biology that is now readily adopted in Museum science seemed more like alchemy only a few years ago. Traditional assumptions about the history and interactions of humankind are broadly disarmed by the changing modern world of cultural interrelationships. And now, as never before, the kind of science fostered by the Museum is needed to define effective stewardship for Earth's eroding natural environments. In these exciting and challenging times, the Museum will continue to seize extraordinary opportunities to transform our scientific vision into meaningful results, a strategy that has served the Museum throughout its history.

Press the "Blue Button" to enter the astounding world available to explore at The American Museum Of Natural History.

On June 18, 2004, The American Numismatic Society officially opened its new headquarters at 96 Fulton Street in lower Manhattan. The ANS contains America's most comprehensive collection of coins, medals and paper currency from every part of the globe. The 35,000 square foot former bank building also encompasses the world's largest numismatic library. The library embraces two full floors. There are educational and research facilities now available to international scholars, students and the general public who are interested in studying coins, medals and other treasures in the Society's superb collection.

The Asia Society Museum is a nonprofit, nonpartisan educational organization. The Society provides a forum for building awareness of the more than thirty countries broadly defined as the Asia-Pacific region, the area from Japan to Iran, and from Central Asia to New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.

Through art exhibitions and performances, films, lectures, seminars and conferences, publications and assistance to the media, and materials and programs for students and teachers, the Asia Society Museum presents the uniqueness and diversity of Asia.

In collaboration with a network of museums and visual arts institutions both national and international, The Chelsea Art Museum seeks to present important, but relatively unexplored dimensions of 20th and 21st Century art, particularly focusing on artists that have been less exposed in the United States than in their home countries. The museum, a 30,000 sq. foot renovated historic building in the heart of Chelsea, is located opposite the piers which served as entry for the arrival and assimilation of foreign cultures into New York. This location provides a powerful symbol of the museum’s mission: to be a meeting point, a destination for exhibitions and works from Europe, the Americas and Asia and returning CAM generated exhibitions to those partners both overseas and within the United States.

The Chelsea Art Museum also serves as the home of the Jean Miotte Foundation which is dedicated to archiving, preserving, presenting and making available for exhibitions the work of Jean Miotte. Rotating selections of Miotte’s work are shown on a regular basis, as are selections from the permanent collection which includes rare holdings of such artists as Pol Bury, Mimmo Rotella, and J.P. Riopelle.

The permanent collection of the Chelsea Art Museum includes many European abstract artists often labeled as Informel, including Corpora, Lakner, Kirkeby, Millares, Miotte, Santomaso, Schumacher, Stöhrer, Thieler, Vedova. The collection also holds American abstract artists Francis, LaNoue, Mitchell, Motherwell, Riopelle; a large body of works by the Affichiste Mimmo Rotella; and works by Jean Arp, Olivier Debré, Jean Fautrier, and Ellen Levy. Sculptors in the collection include Bernar Venet, Pol Bury, Kanter, Jeff Beer, Johannsen and Zadkine. The collection also has an important selection of rare books and works on paper.

Exhibitions at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan are created and built by a team of education specialists and designers and tour both nationally and internationally. Based on the idea that students learn by doing, each theme-based exhibition uses hands-on activities, interactive components and larger than life environments to encourage students to explore in new ways and make learning fun.

Engaging, hands-on programs at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan make learning fun. Key observation, analytical and problem solving skills are developed through applied learning using directed experiments, exhibition exploration, open-ended art projects and more. Activities support learning in the areas of science, math, language and the creative arts, and our interdisciplinary approach to themes appeals to students with a variety of learning styles. Programs conform to New York State and City learning standards, are adapted to each grade level and can be tailored to classes with special needs

The China Institute Gallery has presented over 90 exhibitions, encompassing all areas of Chinese art. With its renowned reputation for high quality exhibitions, scholarly catalogs and interpretive programming, China Institute Gallery has become a unique resource for the general public, scholars, students and connoisseurs to learn about Chinese art and culture.

Every exhibition presented at the Museum sets out to explore, often for the first time, some important feature of academic art and the institutions that nourished it in 19th-century and early 20th-century Europe. Utilizing loans from distinguished international collections, both private and public, previous exhibitions here have examined, among other topics, the training of artists; the world of the Salon with its competitions and juries; the 19th-century fascination with the Orient, reciprocated from Cairo to Paris; the influence of photography, travel, and archeological discoveries of the classical past; and the reproduction of artworks for an international market.

The Dahesh Museum of Art collection contains paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculptures, and books by the most popular artists of 19th-century and early 20th-century Europe. Artists such as Barye, Benouville, Bouguereau, Bonheur, Cabanel, Gérôme, Leighton, Picou, Troyon, and Vernet explored the subjects preferred by their fellow academicians, and by the growing middle-class audience who visited the annual Salons in Europe’s major cities. Sumptuous landscapes, exotic "Oriental" scenes, closely observed animals, grandiloquent images from history and myth, and intimate scenes of everyday life form the core of the Museum’s collection. Works by masters acclaimed today, and also by artists known only in their day, are viewed side-by-side, as they were 150 years ago.

The Ellis Island Immigration Museum is part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument and is one of the country's most popular historic sites. In 2001, The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, in partnership with the National Park Service, unveiled the American Family Immigration History Center. This exciting family research facility at Ellis Island provides visitors with advanced computer and multimedia technology, printed materials, and professional assistance for investigating immigration history, family documentation, and genealogical exploration.

The Ellis Island Immigration Museum is located in the Main Building of the former immigration station complex and tells the moving tales of the 12 million immigrants who entered America through the golden door of Ellis Island. Today, the descendants of those immigrants account for almost half of the American people.

One of your ancestors - a parent, grandparent, or great-grandparent, risked everything to come to this country. Their courage and determination provided the freedom, opportunities and lifestyle we all too often take for granted. Press "Blue Button" to enter The Statue of Liberty - Ellis Island Foundation Visit "The American Immigrant Wall of Honor". You can "Search the Wall", "Link to your Heritage", "Honor Your Grandparents" and 'Search for your Family Records!

Best known for its innovative, award-winning exhibitions, the Museum at Fashion Institute of Technology also has one of the world's most important collections of fashion and textiles, which it collects, conserves, documents, exhibits, and interprets for the purposes of education and inspiration.

The collections continue to grow as pieces are donated or purchased. New acquisitions are considered when they are either exceptional examples or fill a gap in the collections. Today the FIT's Museum collections have a dual function: as design laboratories used by students and professionals and as repositories where historically important objects can be safely preserved and exhibited for the education and aesthetic pleasure of present and future generations

The Frick Collection was founded by Henry Clay Frick, the Pittsburgh coke and steel industrialist. At his death, Mr. Frick bequeathed his New York residence and the most outstanding of his many art works to establish a public gallery for the purpose of “encouraging and developing the study of the fine arts.” Chief among his bequests, which also included sculpture, drawings, prints, and decorative arts such as furniture, porcelains, enamels, rugs and silver, were one hundred thirty-one paintings. Forty-seven additional paintings have been acquired over the years by the Trustees from an endowment provided by the founder and through gifts and bequests. As of the end of 1995 The Frick Collection housed a permanent collection of more than 1,100 works of art from the Renaissance to the late nineteenth century.

The art of The Frick Collection includes superb examples of Old Masters, English eighteenth-century portraits, Dutch seventeenth-century works of art, Italian Renaissance paintings, Renaissance bronzes, Limoge enamels, Chinese porcelains, and French eighteenth-century furniture. Artists represented in the Collection include Rembrandt van Rijn, Giovanni Bellini, El Greco, Frans Hals, Johannes Vermeer, Francois Boucher, Thomas Gainsborough, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Joseph Mallord William Turner, James McNeill Whistler, Francesco Laurana, Jean-Antoine Houdon, and Severo Calzetta da Ravenna.

The Frick Collection, although small, has played a very significant role in collecting and connoisseurship in the United States. The types of paintings collected by Mr. Frick deeply affected the taste of Americans in the decades after his death, first and foremost, that of Andrew Mellon, his close friend, and other collectors who gave to The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., founded by Mellon. Later, the example of The Frick Collection helped determine the nature of museums such as the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. It was, and continues to be, the model for many other collectors and institutions, whether or not they achieve the standards of collecting or the atmosphere of The Frick Collection as we know it today.

The bottom half of the Hayden Sphere houses the Big Bang, where visitors will be transported to the beginning of time and space, experiencing a dramatic, multisensory re-creation of the first moments of the universe. From here, visitors continue on an awe-inspiring journey that chronicles the evolution of the universe by following the Harriet and Robert Heilbrunn Cosmic Pathway, a sloping walkway that takes them through 13 billion years of cosmic evolution.

See the breathtaking Passport to the Universe at the Hayden Planetarium, that reveals the wonders of our universe in a way never before possible in a planetarium. No longer dependent on a single, multi-lens projector, the presentation is driven by computers and processors that treat the audiences to realistic close-up views of star fields and planets, taking them on an exhilarating flight through a virtual re-creation of our universe, into the Orion Nebula, out of our galaxy, and deep into intergalactic space. After reaching the edges of our known universe, the tour takes a "virtual shortcut" back to Earth, in a free fall, headlong through a black hole.

The hangar deck houses three of the legendary aircraft types which originally flew from the Intrepid during World War II: an original TBM Avenger torpedo bomber, and replicas of an F6F Hellcat fighter and an SB2C Helldiver dive bomber.

On the flight deck and portside aircraft elevator, America’s modern military cutting edge is represented by a Navy F-14 Tomcat, an Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon, a Marine Corps aV-8C Harrier, and an A-12 Blackbird spy plane formerly in service with the CIA. During your visit, you’ll also find international air power on display with a British F-1 Scimitar, a French Entendard IV-M and a Polish MiG-21.

The Intrepid Sea-Air Museum's helicopter collection includes two Vietnam-era UH-1 Hueys, a Marine Corps AH-1J Sea Cobra, and a fully restored Army AH-1G Cobra gunship. Press "Blue Button" to browse through the "Intrepid Sea-Air Museum" website, and then plan your visit!

A recent exhibition "WALDSEE-1944" is an exhibition that commemorates the annihilation of Hungarian Jewry during the summer of 1944, when Jews deported by the Nazis to their deaths at Auschwitz were required to write deceptive postcards from "Waldsee" to their families, reassuring them that all was well. Seventy international artists have created their own visual symbolism, in the form of the postcard, to commemorate the Hungarian Holocaust. Among the artists are William Kentridge, Judy Chicago, Tobi Kahn, Archie Rand, Ida Appelbrog, Hanan Harchol, Margalit Mannor, Lynn Avedenka, Ruth Weisberg, Leonard Meiselman, Natan Nuchi, Richard McBee, Donald Woodman, and Mark Podwal.

In 1944, Frieda Schiff Warburg, widow of the prominent businessman and philanthropist, Felix Warburg, donated the family mansion on Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street for use as The Jewish Museum. Located along New York's prestigious Museum Mile, this elegant landmark structure, in the style of a French Gothic chateau, has been our home since 1947. In 1993 an ambitious expansion and renovation project doubled the gallery space, added a glorious permanent exhibition, created classrooms and an auditorium for educational programs, and improved public amenities, including a café.

Through more than 28,000 objects including painting, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, archaeological artifacts, ceremonial objects, and broadcast media, The Jewish Museum's collection demonstrates Jewish identity and its evolution through visual art. It is one of the largest, most extensive collections of its kind in the Western Hemisphere.

Café Weissman, located at The Jewish Museum, is proud to offer innovative kosher cuisine prepared by Foremost Glatt Kosher Caterers serving an exquisite selection of delicious salads, pasta dishes, desserts, and beverages.

What will you remember most about your trip to NYC? Will you remember when you struck a pose and dazzled the paparazzi, when you sang live at the American Idol Experience, when you forecasted the weather with Al Roker, or perhaps when you made Jennifer Lopez blush? In a city with millions of things to see and do, there is only one place where over 200 of the world's top celebrities provide you with an interactive experience of a lifetime. For a trip to remember, visit Madame Tussauds, New York City's House of Wax Museum.

The Metropolitan Museum's permanent collection consists of more than two million works of art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by a group of American citizens, businessmen and financiers as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day, who wanted to create a museum to bring art and art education to the American people.

The Metropolitan Museum's painting collection began in 1870, when three private European collections, 174 paintings in all, came to the Met. A variety of excellent Dutch and Flemish paintings, including works by such artists as Hals and Van Dyck, was supplemented with works by such great European artists as Poussin, Tiepolo, and Guardi.

The collections continued to grow for the rest of the 19th century. But it is the 20th century that has seen the Met's rise to the position of one of the world's great art centers. Some highlights: a work by Renoir entered the Met as early as 1907. The Met has become one of the world's great repositories of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. In 1910 the Metropolitan was the first public institution to accept works of art by Matisse. By 1979 the Museum owned five of the fewer than 40 known Vermeers. The Department of Greek and Roman Art now oversees thousands of objects, including one of the finest collections in glass and silver in the world. The American Wing holds the most comprehensive collection of American art, sculpture, and decorative arts in the world. The Egyptian art collection is the finest outside Cairo. The Islamic art collection is without peer.

In 1880, the Metropolitan Museum moved to its current site in Central Park. The original Gothic-Revival-style building has been greatly expanded in size since then, and the various additions now completely surround the original structure.

Among the additions to the Met are: the Robert Lehman Wing (1975), which houses an extraordinary collection of Old Masters, as well as Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art; the installation in The Sackler Wing of the Temple of Dendur (1978), an Egyptian monument (ca. 15 B.C.) that was given to the United States by Egypt; The American Wing (1980), whose magnificent collection also includes 24 period rooms offering an unparalleled view of American art history and domestic life; The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing (1982) for the display of the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas; the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing (1987), which houses modern art; and the Henry R. Kravis Wing, devoted to European sculpture and decorative arts from the Renaissance to the beginning of the 20th century.

The Metropolitan Museum continues to refine and reorganize the collections in its existing spaces. In June 1998, the Arts of Korea gallery opened to the public, completing a major suite of galleries – a "museum within the Museum". In October 1999 the Ancient Near Eastern Galleries reopened. And a complete renovation and reinstallation of the Greek and Roman Galleries is underway: the first phase, The Robert and Renée Belfer Court for early Greek art, opened in June 1996; the New Greek Galleries premiered in April 1999; and in April 2000 the Cypriot Galleries open to the public.

In June 2002, the Museum of Arts & Design was selected by The New York Economic Development Corporation (EDC), on behalf of Mayor Bloomberg, to redevelop Two Columbus Circle with the goal of bringing a vibrant cultural resource to the area. “I am delighted that Two Columbus Circle will be re-born as a museum and a distinguished work of architecture that will serve as a demonstration of the vitality of New York and the pivotal role that the arts play in the economic, social, and educational life of the city.” Mayor Bloomberg

Opening in 2008, the new Museum of Arts & Design will more than triple its space to 54,000 square feet from 17,000 square feet in its present location. The Museum’s exhibition space will increase fourfold. For the first time since its founding in 1956, the Museum will be able to present and expand its permanent collection of art objects, including ceramics, fiber, glass, metal, paper, wood, mixed media, and design–one of the most distinguished collections of its kind in the world. MAD will also double its gallery space for the display of special exhibitions organized by the Museum and other national and international arts institutions.

The 30,000-square-foot Museum on the waterfront at 36 Battery Place in Manhattan's Battery Park City, with its six-sided shape and tiered roof symbolic of the six points of the Star of David and the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, has proved a powerful attraction as one of New York City's newest cultural destinations. The Museum of Jewish Heritage goes beyond recounting the horrors of the Holocaust. Its mission is to educate people of all ages and backgrounds about the broad tapestry of Jewish life over the past century, before, during, and after the Holocaust.

The Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust - a testament to the endurance of a people, teaches essential and unforgettable lessons about the danger of intolerance. The Museum, like the history of the Jewish people, is a combination of celebration and sorrow, triumph and tragedy. Every object, every display, and every voice is a demonstration of the legacy of courage in the face of adversity that sustained the Jewish people through one of the worst periods in human history.

Each year, the Museum observes Yom HaShoah with a candle-lighting ceremony that brings together Holocaust survivors and high-school students throughout the New York area in a moving demonstration of the power of passing memories from one generation to the next. Hearing the history directly from those who lived it has an impact on students that is far stronger than any book, film, or lecture. As the years pass, it becomes still more important for succeeding generations to hear first-person accounts of this incredible tragedy.

The Museum of Modern Art seeks to create a dialogue between the established and the experimental, the past and the present, in an environment that is responsive to the issues of modern and contemporary art, while being accessible to a public that ranges from scholars to young children. The ultimate purpose of the Museum declared at its founding was to acquire the best modern works of art. While quality remains the primary criterion, the Museum acknowledges and pursues a broader educational purpose: to build a collection which is more than an assemblage of masterworks, which provides a uniquely comprehensive survey of the unfolding modern movement in all visual media.

The Museum of the City of New York's name says it all. With our unique mandate, to engage visitors in exploring the past, present, and future of the five boroughs of New York City and to explore the city's astonishing cultural diversity, we have the opportunity to present a wide variety of exhibitions, public programs, and publications, all investigating what gives New York its singular character. In this year alone, we have presented exhibitions on our own neighborhood of East Harlem, on the oldest community of Jews in North America, on the community-centered values of labor radicalism in the Bronx, on the glamour of "New York style," and on the rich legacy of black theater. Our city's constantly changing built environment was explored through exhibitions of photographs of the subways and through investigations of new design and new architecture. Public programs investigated everything from school reform to solutions to traffic congestion to the future of women in the New York workforce.

Please join us as The Museum of the City of New York continues to explore what makes New York New York.

The National Academy Museum houses one of the largest public collections of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American art in the country. It comprises over five thousand works in almost every artistic style of the past two centuries, from the linear portraiture of the Federal period and the naturalistic landscapes of the Hudson River School to studies of light and atmosphere that inform Tonalism and American Impressionism; from the gritty realism of the Ashcan movement to the modernist movements of Fauvism, abstraction, and photo and magic realism. Masterworks in these and other styles have come into the National Academy Museum's collection mainly as gifts from newly elected National Academicians in compliance with membership requirements; thereby continually enriching the collection.

The National Sports Museum will provide an experience unlike any in New York City, the nation or the world. As a family-oriented attraction, the NSM's exhibits will engage people of all ages through an interactive and celebratory environment. The NSM will include permanent and rotating exhibits, a 360-degree immersion theater, special event spaces, an extensive retail area, and a sports-themed café.

The National Sports Museum's "Immersion Theatre" - During a spectacular 8-minute film presentation, National Sports Museum visitors will occupy the center of the theater space, surrounded by a multi-layered 360-degree video projection system. The film begins with images of empty stadiums and arenas, then proceeds through time-lapse photography to show those venues fill with fans.

Then the games begin: first serves thunder off rackets, drives explode from metal woods, footballs soar from the punter's foot and basketballs tip to one side. The intensity builds as the games proceed and visitors are taken through half-times and time-outs, building to a pulsating final sequence, showing fans celebrating after a thrilling win. Throughout the film, on a Jumbotron, athletes, fans, owners and coaches at all levels of sports talk about each stage of "the game" as it is shown. Press "Blue Button" for more information on the exciting National Sports Museum.

In 2005, the New Museum of Contemporary Art will begin construction of a new home at 235 Bowery at Prince Street. This 60,000 square foot facility will greatly expand the Museum's exhibitions and programs, and will be the first art museum constructed in Downtown New York's modern history.

The Police Museum started to focus more on the history of the department and policing in New York with the appointment of its first curator, Detective Alfred Young who supplemented the displays of the museum with his own, extensive collection of police memorabilia. Detective Young is also credited with designing the current Medal of Honor. By March 2002, the museum opened at its permanent home at 100 Old Slip, the site of the old First Precinct stationhouse, a building that itself reflects the rich history of the NYPD.

Our building at 100 Old Slip was built in 1909-11 and designed by the notable architectural firm of Hunt & Hunt. This building was constructed as the new home for the First Precinct. It was considered a model police facility when built and chiefs of police throughout the country visited the new stationhouse looking to copy some of its features in their own new buildings. This building replaced another stationhouse built on the exact same spot in 1884, in fact the new stationhouse used the same foundation as the building it replaced. The 1884 stationhouse was constructed on the site of the former Franklin Market. It was built in the Neo-Italian Renaissance style. Its visual power was created by a rhythmic series of tall arches, heavy rusticated walls and restrained ornamentation. The building's distinctive profile with its dominating cornice is reminiscent of the Palazzo Riccardi in Florence and is now the home of The New York City Police Museum.

Today, The New-York Historical Society offers a world of information such as the wealth of significant objects housed in the Luce Center, their power to fascinate, evoke the past, and convey the physical reality of history complements the special exhibitions, library resources, and public programs that are also available to visitors. By presenting such treasures in a format at once transparent, adaptable, and accessible, the New-York Historical Society is charting an important new path in the museum community.

Press the "Blue Button" to explore the New York Historical Society & Museum website.

At The Paley Center for Media, you have the opportunity to access an international collection of more than 140,000 programs covering almost 100 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. Programming from some seventy countries is represented in the collection.

In our library you choose a program from the collection. Then you go to watch or listen to it at a console individually - or with up to four people at a family console.

You can also drop in to a screening in one of the Paley Center's theaters. Each day we screen a wide variety of programming from our collection, from David Bowie in performance or a look at the work of Jim Henson or the short films of Saturday Night Live. In our theaters you enjoy the communal experience of watching television together. All of the programming is also available for you to watch or listen to at an individual console through the library.

Throughout the year we offer numerous public programs in the Media as Lens subscription series that bring together writers, directors, producers, actors, critics, journalists, and artists from many disciplines to discuss everything from the creative process behind television and radio to the current trends in media and popular culture, to global political situations. Press "Blue Button" for more information about the The Paley Center for Media.

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.

The Guggenheim collection "online" premiered in April 2001 with a selection of works of art from the New York museum's holdings. Currently representing 169 artists, the collection online encompasses both the classic and the new—from the Guggenheim's earliest work, an 1867 landscape by Camille Pissarro, through more recent acquisitions, a 1998–99 sculpture by Robert Gober—striking a balance that reflects the dynamic tenor of the institution as a whole. Each work may be viewed at small, medium, or large resolution, and is accompanied by insightful commentary.

The Studio Museum in Harlem has a long tradition of presenting programs that address prevalent issues in contemporary art by artists of African descent. Through the Department of Education and Public Programs, we offer a range of activities and programs that engage a diverse cross-section of artists of various disciplines, writers, scholars and critics who share diverse perspectives with our audiences.

Programs include: Architectural Walking Tours, Artists-In-Residence Open Studios, Books & Authors, Director's Dialogues, Hoofers' House, Inside/Out Gallery Tour, Poetry @ SMH, Sunday Salon, The Fine Art Of Collecting, Vital Expressions in American Art: Performance @ SMH.

In the Winter 2001, The Studio Museum in Harlem launched a new initiative Expanding the Walls: Making Connections Between Photography, History and Community, a intergenerational program that uses SMH's James VanDerZee Collection/Archives as the point of entry for people of all ages to share experiences and perspectives on community, identity, history and culture. Expanding the Walls was conceived to allow SMH to develop vital relationships with three distinct populations--youth, families, and senior citizens, as well as the cultural institutions and community based organizations that provide services to these groups.

Over the past decade museums around the nation have undertaken special initiatives to strengthen community relationships. Providing access to the arts, addressing the needs of under-served populations and using museum collections creatively to reflect the identity and interests of community have been the driving forces behind new programs. In developing programs that best meet the needs of their varied constituencies, the museum field has made it a priority to address communities who are often marginalized within the traditional paradigm of museum education. While the field has invested a great deal of time and resources in redefining the role of the museum in communities, many of these efforts have not been sustained and or the programs were intended to function as one-time exposure activities.

The Studio Museum in Harlem has over the last three decades successfully served as a resource for scholars, educators and more traditional museum visitors. In its geographic community-Harlem-however it has been perceived as exclusive and elitist. Its programs, while reflecting the standards of the museum field, have not always addressed the interests of its immediate community.

Expanding the Walls is a program that has been conceived to challenge habitual museum education practices by creating an environment where there is a clear exchange of information and an interactive pedagogical process between community and the institution, and between different generations. At the core of this new initiative is a program through which youth are trained to use photography and the visual arts in general to facilitate discussions of larger social issues in the context of exhibitions presented at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Press "Blue Button" for more information on "Expanding the Walls" and the many exciting events at The Studio Museum in Harlem.

The collection at The Cloisters is complemented by more than six thousand objects exhibited in several galleries on the first floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's main building on Fifth Avenue. Renowned for its architectural sculpture, The Cloisters also rewards visitors with exquisite illuminated manuscripts, stained glass, metalwork, enamels, ivories, and tapestries.

Much of the sculpture at The Cloisters was acquired by George Grey Barnard (1863–1938), a prominent American sculptor and avid collector of medieval art. While working in rural France before World War I, Barnard supplemented his income by locating and selling medieval sculpture and architectural fragments that had made their way into the hands of local landowners over several centuries of political and religious upheaval. He kept many pieces for himself and, upon returning to the United States, opened to the public a churchlike brick structure on Fort Washington Avenue filled with his collection - the first installation of medieval art of its kind in America.

Through the generosity of the philanthropist and collector John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (1874–1960), the museum and all of its contents were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1925. By 1927, it was clear that a new and larger building would be needed to display the collection in a more scholarly fashion. In addition to financing the conversion of 66.5 acres of land just north of Barnard's museum into a public park, inside which the new museum building would be located, and donating seven hundred acres of additional land to the state of New Jersey across the Hudson River to ensure that the view from The Cloisters remain unsullied, Rockefeller contributed medieval works of art from his own collection (including the celebrated set of seven South Netherlandish tapestries depicting "The Hunt of the Unicorn") and established an endowment for operations and future acquisitions.

Press "Blue Button" to see highlights from the collection housed at The Cloisters and presented online.

Yeshiva University Museum presents exhibitions with an interdisciplinary focus that reflect the diversity of the Museum’s collection of more than 8,000 artifacts. As a resource for scholarly research, Yeshiva University Museum’s exhibitions provide unique opportunities for artists, historians, collectors, and ethnographers to examine, compare, and research objects, ideas, and techniques. Its contemporary art shows offer the public the opportunity to survey art being created by living Jewish artists throughout the world.

Features Include: Four Galleries, Exhibition Arcade, Multilingual Tours in English, Hebrew, Spanish, Russian, & Yiddish, Outdoor Sculpture Garden, Docent Lounge, Children’s Workshop, 250 Seat Auditorium, Kosher Café.

"To please the eye, there are the textures of stone scrolled with the delicate designs of lichen, the patterns of tree trunks and clusters of foliage, the play of light and shadow, the varying shades of green as well as the seasonal colors of great beauty. To please the ear, there are the songs of native birds, the hum of insects the chorale of frogs and the occasional splash of carp in the lake, the crunch of pebbles underfoot, the whisper of wind through the pines. To please the sense of scent, there are dry pine needles in the sun, the fragrance of flowering shrubs, a breeze through mimosa or the pungency of loam after a night rain."

Points of Interest: Stroll Garden, Birding, Brush Painting, Children's Workshops, Educational Tours, Silk Tree Cafe

Storm King takes its name from Storm King Mountain, located five miles from the Art Center, whose dramatic slope and peak were favorite subjects for the painters of the Hudson River School. The experience of Storm King, which beautifully unites art and nature, is different with each visit, as changing seasons, light, and weather conditions transform the landscape and the work.

Founded in 1960, the Storm King Art Center is among the world’s most vital modern-art organizations. Its permanent collection of sculpture dates from 1945 to the present and includes works by many of the twentieth century’s most influential artists. The art is meticulously integrated into a landscape of superb vistas of rolling hills and fields—planted with native grasses—and forests. The permanent collection, which includes several specially commissioned site-specific works, is often complemented by both temporary outdoor installations and exhibitions in the museum building.

Among the artists whose work may be seen at Storm King are David Smith, represented by thirteen major sculptures; Alexander Calder, with the fifty-foot-high stabile The Arch (1975); Isamu Noguchi, whose Momo Toro (1977–78) was commissioned by Storm King; Mark di Suvero, with four monumental works; Richard Serra, whose Schunnemunk Fork (1990–91) is installed on ten acres; Louise Nevelson, with City on a High Mountain (1983); and Andy Goldsworthy, whose Storm King Wall (1997–98), a 2,278-foot-long, serpentine wall made of fieldstone, was also commissioned by Storm King.

Visitors may walk through the grounds or take a self-guided tour aboard a handicap-accessible tram that travels through the main portion of the grounds. An audio-guide is available for rental at the museum shop.

Based upon captured British materials brought to West Point after the British defeat at Saratoga in 1777, the Museum collections actually predate the founding of the United States Military Academy. When the Academy opened in 1802, many Revolutionary War trophies remained to be used for cadet instruction. By the 1820s, a teaching collection of artifacts existed at the Military Academy and after the Mexican War (1846 - 1848).

West Point was designated by Executive Order as the permanent depository of war trophies. In 1854 the first public museum was opened and in 1989 the West Point Museum in Olmsted Hall opened at Pershing Center. Today it represents the culmination of more than two centuries of preserving our military heritage. Press "Blue Button" for West Point Gallery, History of US Army Gallery, American Wars Gallery, and more about West Point.

Imagine a unique learning space – colorful, clean, with “a sense of space, light and air…” Filled with creative hands-on exhibitions and public programs. The Westchester Children's Museum will be an institution of distinction for our children, one that is fun and educational, and which reflects the true needs and interests of this community, from children and teenagers, to parents and caregivers, to teachers and educators. Drawing from the dramatic history, extensive cultural diversity, flourishing environments and ecosystems, and the rich literary and artistic traditions of Westchester, the exhibitions and programs of the Museum will be state of the art and:

• Highly innovative, dynamic, engaging, fun and enriching
  
  
• Appeal to audiences of different generations, backgrounds, emotional, physical, and learning abilities
  
  
• Present visitors with the opportunity for hands-on interaction
  
  
• Stimulate repeat visitation with changing exhibits, performances, and public programs