Established by three women in the 1920s, the Museum of Modern Art, along with MoMA PS1 in Queens, attracts millions of visitors annually. It displays some of the most impressive artworks from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Its permanent collection encompasses six curatorial departments: architecture and design, drawings and prints, film, media and performance, painting and sculpture, and photography. Highlights include Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory and masterpieces by Giacometti, Hopper, Matisse, Monet, O’Keeffe, Pollock, Rothko, Warhol and many others. The Philip Johnson-designed Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, which dates to 1939, contains works by Calder, Rodin and Moore. Don't miss the on-site Michelin-starred restaurant, The Modern, which overlooks the garden.
Every good vacationer deserves a trip to an art museum. These bastions of revolutionary thought and constantly evolving mediums draw our surprised attention and admiration—and there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the old masters and mistresses either. The idea that an art museum is a static place of boring two-dimensional artwork is an outdated viewpoint: today’s art museums incorporate a wide array of experiences and engagement with the work, from art viewed by VR goggles to electronic works to audio sound gardens and more. Experimentation has always been the path forward for artists, and work that we now consider mainstream was once visionary and even rejected by the gatekeepers, like Impressionism and Pop Art. Come see what today’s artists are doing!
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