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Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
When Frank Lloyd Wright designed an inverted ziggurat and placed it across from Central Park in 1959, he threw the museum and architectural world into disarray. Instead of cube-shaped galleries designed to be entered and exited, Wright designed a space as exciting as the art it would contain. Visitors, ideally, shoot to the top of the sunlit glass dome by elevator then saunter down six sloping ramps to view art on curved walls. The interior is designed like a nautilus shell so you can see art from multiple levels simultaneously. And the distance and height from which you see the art, ideally, changes the way you see it. There are, still, annexes off to the side, holding the permanent collection of late 19th and early 20th century painters, from swirly, turbulent Van Goghs and jazzy Kandinskys to exuberant Picassos and Braques. But the nucleus of the Guggenheim is the rotunda itself. The organic, spiral shape is repeated and countered by the contours of the art and sculpture on view, the columns on which the rotunda hinges, and even the gold drinking fountains with their half-circles of water and round repositories. Since 1988, director Thomas Krens has irritated and enlivened the art world with showy, populist exhibits from motorcycles to Mapplethorpe, and from video artists Bill Viola and Nam June Paik to the interdisciplinary conceptualist Matthew Barney. But traditional modernists need not avoid this dynamic, tilt-and-twist space—there's still plenty of art by well-known types, like Klee, Brancusi, and Matisse, and round-ups of 20th century artists or the Russian avant-garde. — Diane Mehta
The New-York Historical Society
Whether you want to know more about domesticated pets in the city, 19th century board games, first ladies, flophouses on Bowery, or campaign broadsides, you'll find it here, in a permanent or traveling exhibit as well as in the research library. The New-York Historical Society was founded in 1804 and continues its dual function as a museum and a research institute focused on NYC-centric issues and history. The institution has an extensive collection of Hudson River School paintings, from Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church, plus paintings by Gilbert Stuart and more than 400 of John J. Audubon's Birds of America watercolors. Also housed here, in the open-storage-design Henry Luce II Center, is a quirky grouping of 40,000 objects, including wooden circus toys, dueling pistols, lead pencils, political buttons, scrimshaw horns, George Washington’s inauguration chair, and Tiffany lamps. The research library’s grand, quiet room is a place where historians dig deep into American or regional history, from Colonial to Revolutionary to antebellum life and the Spanish-American war, political ephemera, mercantile history, activism, and genealogy. The millions of books, maps, broadsides, newspapers, architectural drawings, photos, and sheet music in the library’s hefty collection help depict and elucidate those eras from every angle, whether you’re curious about music, buildings, street life, or what was being served in restaurants a century ago. — Diane Mehta
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
The Brooklyn Botanic Garden began as a 39-acre plot donated by the New York State legislature in 1897. Since then, it’s grown to 52 acres of immaculate landscaping ripe with color; bluebells and daffodils carpet the hills and wooded areas, and in The Cranford Rose Garden (with more its than 5,000 plants and 1,400 varieties), roses of every shape and size, in mauve, scarlet, or apricot hues, twist around latticework and creep across fifteen rectangular beds. The most dramatic display is the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, an idyllic, contemplative setting with a the lake at its center and architectural elements—rocks, bridges, and lanterns—throughout. Visitors can sniff out aromatic flowers and plants with scented leaves in the Fragrance Garden, admire bonsai trees in the Steinhardt Conservatory, or search the landscaped Herb Garden for medicinal and flavored herbs. Evolutionists-in-training can track the history of plantae in the Family Plant Collection, which are organized according to when they appeared on Earth. (Ferns were first.) No matter what time of year, there's always something in bloom: lotus plants in August, beautyberries in November, flowering Oriental Cherry trees in spring. — Diane Mehta
