When you look up museums in NYC, you’ll likely find the classics like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, and The Whitney, but there are so many others that are also worth checking out. Here are just a few that I have enjoyed and recommend people go to whether they live here or are visiting.

The Poster House

This is one of my all time favorites. The Poster House tells niche stories with each exhibition, often going into great details that help you learn so much about the topic in focus. The first exhibition I’d gone to there was about the rise and fall of experimental, dynamic Soviet film posters and how the government embraced cinema as a means of propaganda. And each one that I’ve been to since this has been just as interesting and fun to learn about. I always enjoy going here because you’ll never know what you’ll learn. It also has an amazing gift shop.

The Transit Museum

Whether you love it or hate it, the transit system is essential to New York. The Transit Museum isn’t just a museum that tells you how the system was built and maintained, it also has real trains from throughout the years that you can walk into and explore. It’s in-depth and really fun to visit. Even people who aren’t really into trains will find it fun!

Tenement Museum

Tenement buildings were home to many families throughout the years, from many different backgrounds. The Tenement Museum tells their stories and the history of immigration, migrants and refugees in NYC. The museum takes great care to set up each room of the tour to be as realistic and true as possible, which really brings their stories to life. The people who lead the tours have great care for the work that they do and for honoring the people’s stories they’re telling. It’s really a great museum and one that you can visit many times as they offer several tours and they do change up the stories they tell.

Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Plus, it’s a fun museum that always has quite a lot of events and interesting exhibitions going on. I’ve gone a few different times to this one and always have a good time. Over the last few years, I’ve even attended a few exhibitions that were tied to specific designers like Mugler and they were really worth checking out.

Check Out Culture Pass

If you’re a NYC resident and have a library card, be sure to check out Culture Pass. All you need to do is put in your library card information and you’ll have lots of great museums around each of the boroughs that you can visit for free. With this pass, I’ve gone to several museums that I’d never thought of visiting before as well as ones that I’d been really interested in visiting, but kept making excuses not to.

Another great thing to look into is the free days that many museums will have (plus some that are always free like the American Folk Art Museum). Also, many museums offer a “pay what you wish” for residents, so there are plenty of options to take if you want to check out museums, but don’t want to spend an arm and a leg each time.