New York City Art Galleries, Museums, Supplies & More
If you are trying to learn about art in New York City you are definitely in the right place and our first section will fully cover the best art galleries and museums near you.
After that we will get into a variety of other topics like NYC art supply stores, events, festivals, dealers, appraisers, walking tours, local sculptures and statues, art classes, studios for rent, and the top frame shops in your area.
You can jump straight to any section that interests you most by using the table of contents on the left and we are also including a New York City art map with all of the spots we mention throughout the post pinned on it.
And the curious types are welcome to look through more of our posts on this part of the country there if interested.
Best Art Galleries & Museums In New York City
The best art galleries and museums in New York City are some of the best in the world so enjoy your time at:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is America’s largest art museum with over two million works in its permanent collection. Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein, Jasper Johns’ White Flag, Jackson Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm Number 30, Max Beckmann’s triptych Beginning, and major drawings by Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Rembrandt are among the collection’s highlights. Visitors can also participate in a wide range of programs, including local art courses, workshops, and live performances.
The Met is open from 10am to 5pm Sunday through Thursday except for Wednesday when they are closed and they stay open until 9pm on Friday and Saturday. In addition MetFest goes down each October and is a can’t miss.
The Museum of the City of New York has a collection of over 750,000 objects including over 3,000 by Currier and Ives along with an extensive collection of pictures by noted photographers Percy Byron, Jacob Riis, and Berenice Abbott plus still photography by Stanley Kubrick. They host a variety of regular small events and also offer curated walking tours and you can check all of this out from 10am to 5pm Friday through Monday, they are closed Tuesday and Wednesday, and on Thursday their hours are 10am to 9pm.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has a permanent collection of approximately 8,000 artworks including some by innovative painters like Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Vincent van Gogh, and they even have thirty made by Pablo Picasso. Throughout the year there are special exhibitions of modern and contemporary art, lectures by creators and critics, performances and film screenings, and classes for teens and adults. Every Saturday from 4pm to 6pm admission is whatever you feel like paying and the Guggenheim is closed on Tuesday but open from 11am to 6pm throughout the week except for Saturday when they close at 8pm.
The permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art covers the late 19th century to the present day with over 25,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, films, videos, and objects of new media by over 3,600 artists. The Whitney Biennial is an international art show featuring many lesser-known artists new to the art scene in your area that takes place at the museum every two years. They also offer a variety of public programs including art classes and they are closed all day on Tuesday and normally close at 6pm but on Friday nights you can check out what they have displayed until 10pm.
The Frick Collection is well-known for its distinguished Old Master paintings and European fine and decorative arts. Among the collection’s highlights are Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s masterpiece The Progress of Love, three paintings by Johannes Vermeer including Mistress and Maid, Quay at Amsterdam by Jacob van Ruisdael, and Piero della Francesca’s St. John the Evangelist. Every first Friday of the month admission is free and you can pay whatever you want to enter on Thursdays from 4pm to 6pm. Don’t visit them Monday through Wednesday as they will be closed but The Frick is open from 10am to 6pm the rest of the week.
The Jewish Museum opened in 1904 and was the first institution of its kind in the United States and one of the world’s oldest Jewish museums. It is open from 11am to 6pm Friday through Monday, from 11am to 8pm on Thursday, and is closed on Tuesday and Wednesday while housing a one-of-a-kind collection of almost 30,000 works of art and providing exciting educational programs ranging from seminars and lectures to performances and hands-on art making for people of all ages and backgrounds. You can always get in for free on Saturdays.
The Neue Galerie is a museum devoted to early twentieth-century German and Austrian art and design with works by Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele on display. They have major exhibitions of various German works including art movements like Der Blaue Reiter, Die Brücke, and the Bauhaus. Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I and Picasso’s Boy With a Pipe are some of the highlights of their collections. On the First Friday of every month the museum is open late and offers free admission from 4pm to 7pm while their normal hours are 11am to 5pm Thursday through Monday.
The Rubin Museum of Art houses a permanent collection of approximately 3,800 objects dating from more than 1,500 years ago to the present day. They host a variety of regular thematic series ranging from dialogues on mind science to some of the best art-making workshops near you. Seniors 65 and older receive free admission to the galleries on the first Thursday of each month and while they are closed Monday through Wednesday they are open from 11am to 5pm the other days except Friday night when they close at 10pm.
The Museum of Modern Art is widely regarded as one of the world’s largest and most influential museums of its kind and has over 200,000 works of modern and contemporary art in the collection. It is home to important and well-known pieces including Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Salvador Dal’s The Persistence of Memory, Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night, Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans, and many other fascinating thing you must see. You can check all of those out from 10:30am to 5:30pm daily and on Saturday they don’t close until 7pm.
The Brooklyn Museum is open from 11am to 6pm Wednesday through Sunday and is the third largest physical museum in your area with a collection of approximately 1.5 million works of art. Mark Rothko, Edward Hopper, Norman Rockwell, Winslow Homer, Edgar Degas, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Max Weber are among those who are represented in the collection. They offer a variety of activities such as collection-based art workshops, lectures, live performances, classes, and camps.
Minus Space is open from 11am to 5pm Thursday through Saturday and specializes in international reductive abstract art and is the only gallery of its kind in the United States. Their exhibitions are free and open to the public plus they offer expert advisory services and expertise in research, documentation, framing, installation, commissions, conservation, insurance, and fine art appraisal. Minus Space even has workshops and classes for student groups of all levels including graduate, undergraduate, continuing education, and K-12 students.
The Bronx Museum of the Arts owns over 2,000 contemporary artworks in all media with some very important pieces by artists such as Vito Acconci, Alvin Baltrop, Elizabeth Catlett, Juan Downey, yvind Fahlström, Raphael Montaez Ortiz, and Martin Wong. The Queens Museum’s permanent collection contains approximately 10,000 items and some were created by Salvador Dal, Mark Dion, and William Sharp who was a court reporter and political cartoonist. Visit them from 1pm to 6pm Wednesday through Sunday.
The Panorama of the City of New York was commissioned by Robert Moses and is the Queens Museum’s most well-known permanent exhibition. They provide a variety of film screenings, dance performances, musical experiences, and public dialogues to visitors from 12pm to 5pm Wednesday through Friday and from 11am to 5pm on weekends.
Staten Island Museum is the island’s oldest cultural institution and NYC’s only remaining general interest museum. There are important 19th–20th-century paintings, prints by Rembrandt, Goya, Piranesi, and Japanese prints by Hiroshige, Hokusai, Utamaro, and Kunisada. You will also encounter works by John Sloane, Guy Pene du Bois, and Andy Warhol in their modern collection which is viewable from 11am to 5pm Wednesday through Sunday.
Materials & Supply Stores Near You
The best local stores to buy art supplies and materials are:
The League’s Art Supply Store sells fine art supplies near you for drawing, painting, sculpting, and printmaking. Columbia Omni carries over 20,000 art and design supplies while also providing full-service custom large-quantity cutting of illustration boards, foam boards, mats, and papers.
Scribbles has over 30,000 items in stock while Talas also has tens of thousands of incredibly unique and high-quality items. The Art Station offers office, art, and school supplies along with custom or ready-made framing and a party venue for kids and adults in addition to art classes for people of all ages.
KC Arts has an extensive selection of art supplies and art-related gifts while also doing high quality custom framing.
Shows, Festivals & Events
You will find some of the best art shows, festivals, and events in the world held right here:
Each May Frieze New York brings together world-renowned galleries and features the fair’s much-loved frame section which is dedicated to emerging galleries. An extended program of collaborations, special projects, and seminars will accompany the fair.
Spring/Break Art Show is an internationally recognized exhibition platform that uses underused, unconventional, and historic NYC exhibition spaces to engage and disrupt the traditional cultural landscape of the art market in your area usually but not always during Armory Arts Week. Over 100 curatorial exhibitions were on display at a recent show.
The Armory Show is definitely one of the premier art fairs near you if not the world featuring works by modern masters and cutting-edge contemporary artists on display from the world’s most prestigious international galleries. Each September you can expect hundreds of galleries from dozens of countries to be in attendance.
The Downtown Brooklyn Arts Festival is an annual celebration of the cultural community that takes place in September and features exciting performances, workshops, talks, films, family programming, and exhibitions.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art hosts MetFest in October where you can meet artists and community partners from all five boroughs at a daylong celebration on the iconic front steps and David H. Koch Plaza as well as in the galleries. Live music, performances, art-making activities, carnival stilt walkers, a citywide Double Dutch showcase, and more will bring people together.
The Art Show brings together the best galleries in the country to present well curated exhibitions of historical and contemporary works. The Art Dealers Association of America hosts the event every November at Park Avenue Armory featuring programming ranging from performances to dynamic keynote presentations.
The Whitney Biennial is an international art show that features many lesser-known creators who are new to the American scene. It is the longest-running survey of American art and has been a centerpiece of the Whitney Museum since 1932.
Art Dealers & Appraisers
Some of the top local art dealers and appraisers would be:
Art for Film at Brooklyn Navy Yard Building 131 #3V
Syl Lee Antiques buys and sells fine art in New York City while making house calls that are convenient, confidential, and courteous. They also do free appraisals of antique and fine items and can assist you in selling your works at auction.
Lydia Kutko Art Consulting can help with acquisitions through galleries, auctions, and the secondary market, appraisals, commissions, and custom framing. Joseph K Levene is a secondary market dealer of postwar and contemporary works as well as a fine art advisor and purchaser.
Terri Kahan Fine Art is a full-service consultant that provides private and corporate clients a wide range of advisory services. They can represent you at auctions, provide appraisal services, and manage your collection.
Fine Art Brokers provide expert consultancy tailored to your preferences, knowledge, and needs. They assist private and corporate clients with all aspects of the art purchasing, selling, and auction process.
Minus Space from our initial best galleries near you list also sells works and offer appraisal services.
Walking Tours
Go on a local art walk to see a lot of unique things in a short amount of time:
With over 25 years of experience Arts and Craft Tours provides individualized meticulously tailored small group tours of 19th and 20th century art and architecture. Art Smart offers private museum and gallery tours throughout your area and can even advise in purchasing.
New York Walking Tours offers half-day and full-day personalized walking tours beginning at your hotel or a location of your choice. They will take you to see public art, museums, and galleries as well as the great architecture of NYC.
Museum of the City of New York provides walking tours of Lower Manhattan to explore the architecture, urban planning, and public displays that gave this district a modern look and generated iconic spaces like the original World Trade Center and Tribeca.
Brooklyn Unplugged Tours + Graffiti Art offers a variety of public and private walking tours and will take you to see street art in Brooklyn which includes Williamsburg and the artsy neighborhood of Bushwick.
Sculptures & Statues
There are some really nice sculptures and statues near you like:
The Statue of Liberty
Balto Statue at Central Park, East Side
Group of Four Trees at One Chase Manhattan Plaza
The World Trade Center Sphere at 165 Liberty St
Charging Bull at Bowling Green Broadway & Morris St
George Washington Statue at 5 Union Square E
Alice In Wonderland at Central Park, East Side
Bailey Fountain at Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn
Ulysses S Grant Statue at Rogers Ave, Brooklyn
Henry Ward Beecher Monument at Cadman Plaza, Brooklyn
Christopher Columbus at Cadman Plaza , Brooklyn
Fountain of Life at Bronx Park Rd, The Bronx
Louis J Heintz Memorial at Walton Ave & E 161 St, The Bronx
Bronx Victory Memorial at Pelham Bay Park, The Bronx
Socrates Sculpture Park at 32-01 Vernon Blvd, Queens
Fountain of the Dolphins at 378 Sand Ln, Staten Island
The Hiker Monument at Tompkinsville Park, Staten Island
The Statue of Liberty was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and its metal framework was built by Gustave Eiffel as a gift from the people of France to the people of the United States in the late 1800’s.
On December 17, 1925 the Balto Statue was unveiled on the east side of New York City’s Central Park after being created by Frederick Roth
The Group of Four Trees can be found in the Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza and it was sculpted by Jean Dubuffet and unveiled in 1972.
The World Trade Center Sphere was sculpted by German artist Fritz Koenig and is the world’s largest bronze sculpture of modern times and can be found in Liberty Park.
Charging Bull is a bronze sculpture in Manhattan’s Financial District that is located just north of Bowling Green on Broadway. In 1987 Italian artist Arturo Di Modica created the sculpture.
The George Washington Statue was designed by Henry Kirke Brown in the mid 1800’s and it is the oldest sculpture in the collection of the NYC Parks.
The Ulysses S Grant Statue was sculpted by William Ordway Partridge and was unveiled just before the turn of the 20th Century.
Sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward made the Henry Ward Beecher Monument which was dedicated in 1891 and can be found near the one you are about to read about next.
The Statue of Christopher Columbus was designed by Emma Stebbins and stands in front of the State Supreme Court Building.
The Louis J Heintz Memorial was designed by French sculptor Pierre Feitu and was dedicated in 1909 in the Grand Concourse.
Allen G. Newman created the Hiker Monument which was dedicated in 1916 and was initially located in front of Staten Island Borough Hall but in 1925 it was relocated to its current location.
NYC Art Classes
Whether you need lessons for kids or are an adult who wants to grow his skills you have some options. Some of the best New York City art schools and classes can be found at:
The Cooper Union is a private college that provides fine arts undergraduate degrees in drawing, film, video, graphic design, painting, photography, printmaking, and sculpture among others. They also offer summer art intensives and continuing education programs.
The Art Students League of New York offers art courses in your area for students of all ages, backgrounds, and skill levels. They host over 100 classes and workshops during the day and evening with full-time, part-time, and short-term workshops available.
Painting Lounge classes are designed for people aged 18 and up as well as children aged 8 and up when accompanied by an adult. Night classes, private parties, and team building workshops are also available.
Kimmy Ma Art Studio offers private or semi-private lessons to children starting at the age of five with a selection of programs including school break classes, private parties, and family workshops.
MorningSun Art School offers classes for kids, teens, and adults as they teach drawing, painting, and other basic art fundamentals near you and can also provide portfolio preparation classes for testing into specialized art high schools and applying to colleges.
Art Lab Inc offers classes to people of all ages throughout the year with four semesters of classes and workshops. Summer studio programs for teens and adults in addition to art camps for children are also available.
Sew Artsy Inc provides art lessons for children and adults in small group or private sessions as well as classes to help students prepare college portfolios.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum, Minus Space, and The Art Station also have quality instructors who give lessons.
Studios For Rent Near You
When you are itching to get that next project started rent some space at one of these art studios in your area:
567 Framing’s main services include custom framing, large format Giclee printing, face mounting, and canvas printing and stretching with same-day services available.
Frames and Stretchers provides full-service custom framing including on-site framing, canvas stretching, and art restoration.
City Frame Inc has thousands of frame styles available in hardwoods, gold leaf, welded steel, and aluminum.
Metro Frame Art has locations on the Upper West Side and in Riverdale and can give free delivery and expert installation throughout New York and northern New Jersey.
Sam’s Art & Framing Inc has the only 48″ x 96″ dry mount vacuum seal machine in Queens and can also assist with fine art appraisals in your area.
More options for quality custom framing from other lists include The Art Station, Blick Art Materials, Michaels, KC Arts, and Lydia Kutko Art Consulting. We welcome you all to look through our other posts on:
That is all we have to share for now but we will be back to update this often. After reading about the best local galleries, museums, events, shows, supply stores, dealers, appraisers, walking tours, sculptures, classes, studios, and framers in your area you should be fully prepared.
Those who are still reading this probably love the art near you as much as we do. If so go ahead and use the comments to share your own tips or to let us know if you think we got anything wrong.
We hope you enjoy your time at the best New York City Art Galleries, Museums, Supply Stores or doing whatever else you plan to do with the info.
This post and all of the posts on our site are edited by Dan Soloman who has been a huge fan of art since he was a little kid. His mother was a good local artist, and she taught him the trade from a very early age. He studied art and its history in both high school and college, has worked at multiple galleries, and recently has begun creating and editing online content for this site and some other online media platforms.
