Museum of Modern Art

Tickets, Free Friday Nights & Visitor Guide to NYC's Modern Art Collection

⏱ 2-4 hours👤 All ages$$

The Museum of Modern Art opened in 1929, three months before the Wall Street crash, with the radical mission of treating modern art as a serious discipline equal to the established old-master traditions. A century later, its collection contains many of the 20th century's most canonized paintings — Van Gogh's Starry Night, Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Monet's Water Lilies, Matisse's Dance, Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans, Pollock's drip paintings, Hopper's Gas, Magritte's The Lovers.

The 2019 expansion (designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro) added 40,000 square feet of gallery space and significantly improved the museum's flow. The Marron Family Atrium is the central organizing space. The David Geffen Wing hosts the rotating contemporary program; the original Goodwin/Stone building still holds the canonical collection. The sculpture garden (designed by Philip Johnson) is the rare quiet outdoor space in Midtown.

Highly-rated focus areas for first-time visitors: the 5th floor (Starry Night, Picasso, Matisse, the canonical modernist core), the 4th floor (Pollock, Rothko, mid-century American abstract expressionism), and the 6th-floor rotating contemporary exhibitions. The film program (multiple daily screenings) is one of the city's best repertory venues.

UNIQLO Free Friday Nights — every Friday 4-8 PM — offer free general admission, which makes MoMA accessible without paying the relatively expensive standard rate. Get there before 4 to queue.