Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum is the third-largest museum in New York City (at 560,000 square feet), and its collection of more than 500,000 objects is second only to the Metropolitan Museum’s. Like the Met, the Brooklyn Museum’s holdings span art history from antiquity to the present, with works from the Classical Greco-Roman world as well as from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and the Pacific Islands.

The Brooklyn Museum is particularly known for its trove of ancient Egyptian sculpture, reliefs, paintings, pottery, and papyri. The museum’s other treasures include examples of 18th- and 19th- century American fine and decorative art, some of which are incorporated into period rooms, and masterpieces of French and American Impressionism.

The Brooklyn Museum also showcases contemporary art, in both its permanent collection (which includes Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, ensconced within the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art ) and its exhibitions (among them the infamous 1999 “Sensation” show, which introduced the work of the YBAs, or Young British Artists, to America). The Brooklyn Museum has also presented exhibits devoted to fashion, sneaker culture, and the career of rock superstar David Bowie.

Founded in 1823 as the Brooklyn Apprentices’ Library, the Brooklyn Museum was officially designated as such in 1889. It moved into its current home, at the edge of Prospect Park along Eastern Parkway, in 1897. Its resplendent Beaux Arts building, designed by the renowned Gilded Age architecture firm of McKim, Mead & White, has been expanded several times over the years, most recently with the 2004 addition of a glass-clad entrance designed by James Polshek.