New York can be a magical place for museumgoers. It can also be overwhelming and overcrowded at times, especially at the biggest, most famous museums.
Luckily, the city has scores of great museums to choose from: Everything from small and quirky, to elegant gems housed in historic mansions, to preserved Lower East Side tenement apartments and hands-on experiences that might surprise even longtime New Yorkers.
“Going to the Museum of Modern Art or the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the American Museum of Natural History is fantastic. But they can be like a big super-sized coffee drink, while we’re more like a cup of espresso,” says Alex Kalman, director of two of the city’s tiniest museums, Mmuseumm1 and Mmuseumm2.
One is built into an old elevator shaft in a downtown alleyway. (Both museums are closed for the holidays but reopen in spring.)
At other small museums you’ll find a cozy, Viennese-style coffee shop; kosher Jewish comfort food like bagels, blintzes, herring and house-cured salmon; and edgy gift shops to rival MoMA’s famous one. You could view the chair that George Washington sat in before giving his inaugural address to Congress (New York City was the seat of U.S. government in those days.) Or you might make seltzer or solve math puzzles.
Here’s some of what’s happening at NYC’s “other” museums:
227 W 27th St.
Tucked inside the Fashion Institute of Technology, behind the big sculpture in front, is the city’s only museum solely devoted to fashion. And it’s free. The current show, ”Africa’s Fashion Diaspora,” runs through Dec. 29.
“It’s about Africa as an idea that continues to inspire designers from Africa and also those whose ancestors came from Africa,” says museum director Valerie Steele.
Opening in February is “Fashioning Wonder: A Cabinet of Curiosities,” exploring connections between cabinets of curiosities and fashion.
1048 5th Ave.
This museum, housed in a 1914 Gilded Age mansion that was once home to society doyenne Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt III, focuses on art and design from Austria and Germany. Its Cafe Sabarsky is a destination of its own, with 1912 upholstery, period decor, and a grand piano in the corner used for cabaret, chamber and classical music performances. On view now is ”Egon Schiele: Living Landscapes″ and ”Austrian Masterworks from the Neue Galerie.”
The museum “transports you to Christmas in Vienna,” says director Renée Price. “We dress up our 1914 historic landmark building with wreaths and ribbons, evoking a prior era.... Delight in some Apfelstrudel and savor our Hot Chocolate with Rum in Café Sabarsky.” (Pro tip: The cafe is at its quietest for breakfast.)
1109 5th Ave. at 92nd St.
Not far from the Neue Galerie. On view now are “Illit Azouley: Mere Things,” the first solo exhibit in a U.S. museum dedicated to the Berlin-based artist, and “Engaging with History: Works from the Collection.” Other displays include the “Tel Dan Stele,” a 9th century BCE stone monument fragment containing the earliest mention of the royal House of David outside of the Bible.
The gift shop features an impressive array of menorahs, dreidels, Hanukkah candles and specialty gifts, including works by artist Oded Halahmy. There’s a cafe with updated takes on traditional bagels, blintzes, herring and house-cured salmon.
There is also Hanukkah-related family programming.
2 East 91st St.
Also nearby is one of the city’s two Smithsonian museums. The Cooper Hewitt focuses on innovative design. Its gift shop rivals MoMA’s, and there’s a private garden and small restaurant. The museum is housed in the former home of industrial magnate Andrew Carnegie. Completed in 1902, the mansion was the first in the U.S. to have a structural steel frame, and one of the first in the city to have a residential Otis passenger elevator. It also was among the first homes to feature central heating. It is now LEED-certified and features other cutting-edge technologies.
A major exhibit on now, “Making Home: Smithsonian Design Triennial,” explores design’s role in shaping concepts of home, physically and emotionally. It sprawls over the entire mansion and will be on view through Aug. 10.
1 Bowling Green
The other Smithsonian in town, it’s at the lower end of Manhattan inside the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Customs House, now a city landmark. Admission is free, and current exhibitions include “Jeffrey Veregge: Of Gods and Heroes,” “Native New York” and “Infinity of Nations.”
The gift shop features authentic Native American art, crafts, apparel and jewelry from a wide representation of groups, in addition to books by and about Native Americans.
103 Orchard St.
With something for all ages, the Tenement Museum is housed in two preserved tenement buildings, one from 1863 and the other from 1888. Each apartment is a kind of time capsule, telling the story of a different immigrant or migrant family who lived there. The museum also offers walking tours of the neighborhood.
“What is most unique about the Tenement Museum is that it shines the spotlight on ‘ordinary people’ — working-class families who never imagined they’d one day be the subject of a museum,” says Tenement Museum President Annie Polland.
“Whereas at the MoMA and Met you see great art, and at the AMNH you see dinosaurs, at the Tenement Museum you immerse yourself in real stories and consider what it means to be American,” she said.
Certain apartments — Italian, German, Puerto Rican — are decorated for Christmas.
170 Central Park West
A great way to learn more about the city’s history, including the fact that Washington was inaugurated here. A permanent gallery on the fourth floor features a detailed recreation of the White House Oval Office in Washington, D.C., where presidents have worked since 1909.
The Meet the Presidents Gallery traces, through artwork and objects, the evolution of the presidency and executive branch. Also on view is the chair from Washington’s inauguration at Federal Hall, on Wall Street, the only presidential inauguration held in New York City.
Other current exhibits include “Pets and the City,” “Fred W. McDarrah: Pride and Protest.” There’s a permanent “Gallery of Tiffany Lamps.”
225 Fifth Ave.
A hands-on museum with all kinds of math-oriented puzzles and thought-inspiring curiosities, like a tricycle with square wheels that rides smoothly on a zigzagged surface. In an exhibit called “Human Tree,” visitors can make successively smaller images of themselves that combine to make a “fractal tree” that sways in response to their movements.
474 Hemlock St, Brooklyn
An interactive museum and factory tour run in partnership with the city’s oldest seltzer works, a family business now in its fourth generation. The museum, inside Brooklyn Seltzer Boys’ active factory, is “dedicated to preserving and promoting the effervescent history of seltzer water,” and celebrates “the manufacturing of seltzer, the science of seltzer, and seltzer as a cultural force in New York City and the world beyond.”