The Metropolitan Museum of Art collects, studies, conserves, and presents significant works of art across all times and cultures in order to connect people to creativity, knowledge, and ideas.

The Metropolitan Museum's permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided among seventeen curatorial departments. Represented in the permanent collection are art and objects from classical antiquity and Ancient Egypt, paintings and sculptures from European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern art. The Museum also maintains galleries of African, Asian, Oceanic, Byzantine, and Islamic art.The Museum houses collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories. Several historical interiors, ranging from first-century Rome through modern American design, are permanently installed in the Met's galleries.

The mission of the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) is to collect, display, and interpret objects that document contemporary and historic innovation in craft, art, and design. In its exhibitions and educational programs, the Museum celebrates the creative process through which materials are crafted into works that enhance contemporary life.

The Museum’s curatorial program builds upon a rich history of exhibitions that emphasize a cross-disciplinary approach to art and design, and reveals the workmanship behind the objects and environments that shape our everyday lives. MAD provides an international platform for practitioners who are influencing the direction of cultural production and driving 21st-century innovation, fostering a participatory setting for visitors to have direct encounters with skilled making and compelling works of art and design.

The Museum of Modern Art is dedicated to being the foremost museum of modern art in the world. The Museum seeks to create a dialogue between the established and the experimental, the past and the present, in an environment that is responsive to the issues of modern and contemporary art, while being accessible to a public that ranges from scholars to young children.

Modern and Contemporary works on view transcend national boundaries and involve all forms of visual expression, including painting and sculpture, drawings, prints and illustrated books, photography, architecture and design, and film and video, as well as new forms yet to be developed or understood, that reflect and explore the artistic issues of the era.

An internationally renowned art museum and one of the most significant architectural icons of the 20th century, the Guggenheim Museum is at once a vital cultural center, an educational institution, and the heart of an international network of museums.

Visitors can experience special exhibitions of modern and contemporary art, lectures by artists and critics, performances and film screenings, classes for teens and adults, and daily tours of the galleries led by museum educators.

Founded on a collection of early modern masterpieces, the Guggenheim Museum today is an ever-growing institution devoted to the art of the 20th century and beyond.

The Frick Collection is known for its distinguished Old Master paintings and outstanding examples of European sculpture and decorative arts.

The collection was assembled by the Pittsburgh industrialist Henry Clay Frick (1849–1919) and is housed in his former residence on Fifth Avenue. One of New York City’s few remaining Gilded Age mansions, it provides a tranquil environment for visitors to experience masterpieces by artists such as Bellini, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Gainsborough, Goya, and Whistler.

Along with special exhibitions and an acclaimed concert series, the Frick offers a wide range of lectures, symposia, and education programs that foster a deeper appreciation of its permanent collection.

Since its inception in 1931, the Whitney has championed American art and artists by assembling a rich permanent collection and featuring a rigorous and varied schedule of exhibition programs. By emphasizing seminal artists and artworks from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the museum organizes important exhibitions both from their holdings and from the collections of individuals and institutions worldwide.

Exhibitions range from historical surveys and in-depth retrospectives of major twentieth-century and contemporary artists to group shows introducing young or relatively unknown artists to a larger public. The Biennial, an invitational show of work produced in the preceding two years, was introduced by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in 1932. It is the only continuous series of exhibitions in the country to survey recent developments in American art. The Whitney also presents acclaimed exhibitions of film and video, architecture, photography, and new media.

The Whitney’s collection includes over 21,000 works created by more than 3,000 artists in the United States during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At its core are Museum founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s personal holdings, totaling some 600 works when the Museum opened in 1931.