I want to start writing more about the museum world beyond the places I visit. Here are some recent museum thoughts.
Hip Hop Hurray
On my way to my very enjoyable recent visit to the Bronx Children’s Museum, I walked by the future home of the Hip Hop Museum, scheduled to open later in 2026. Where the Bronx Children’s Museum is in a rejuvenated century-old historic building, the Hip Hop Museum’s future home is the ground floor of a brand-new apartment building, at the southern end of the pretty little Mill Pond Park. I have been excited about this museum since I first heard about it. On the one hand, hip hop, like jazz, is one of those living art forms that maybe you can’t contain in a museum. On the other hand, there’s so much amazing history and fantastic art related to hip hop. One of the best photography shows I’ve seen was a hip hop exhibition at the (now closed) Fotografiska.
Civil Rights Soon
People ask me how I maintain my database. How does one create a list of all the museums in the City? Well, I pay attention to local news, and friends have told me about places. When I started, the NYC Visitors’ Bureau had a list, albeit an obsolete and incomplete one. But, sometimes I just get lucky. Such is the case with the upcoming Urban Civil Rights Museum, opening on 125th Street sometime later in 2026. I was on a city bus when I happened to look up at the right time and caught a glimpse of the signage. Talk about a timely topic for a museum.
Sex on a Bus?
Speaking of buses, the other day it occurred to me to wonder what possessed the Museum of Sex to buy the ad space on the front of every single local bus in New York City. It’s about as simple an ad as possible, no invitation to visit, nothing salacious whatsoever. Just the name of the place and the address, in bright, day-glo colors.
As someone who thinks about advertising and marketing professionally, I have to wonder, do these front-of-bus spots work? Do they entice people to visit? The ads have been plastered on the front of buses long enough that they’re kind of invisible to me (except now that I’m thinking about them), and probably to many other New Yorkers, too. But maybe they jump out to visitors.
And, as a sometimes somewhat morbid person, I also imagine how the ad campaign makes it even worse than usual to get run over by a bus these days. Rather than your life flashing before your eyes, the very last thing that would flash before your eyes is… the Museum of Sex. And now that I’ve had that thought I’m going to be super careful about jaywalking in front of buses.
Revisiting the Breuer
A few weeks ago when it was exceedingly hot in New York City, I took myself to Sotheby’s. The venerable auction house has taken up residence in the landmark, Brutalist, Marcel Breuer-designed building on Madison Avenue that was built as the home to the Whitney Museum of American Art,. After the Whitney moved to the Meatpacking District, the Metropolitan Museum of Art expanded there for a bit, and after that it formed the fantastic temporary home of the Frick Collection.
I have never loved the Breuer Building, though the organizations that have occupied that space have done good things with it. However, I’m glad it’s still a place that people can visit, at least when auction previews are going on. And, I have to say, Gus, the Tyrannosaurus rex that Sotheby’s recently auctioned for a record $50 million, looked spectacular against the concrete. I also saw an America250-ish auction that put together a slew of “Americana”: art by American artists, books by American authors, and assorted other ephemera. In some ways, it’s very much like a museum still occupies the building. It’s just that the wall texts now all include estimated prices.
Shock of the Neue
Speaking of the Met, it’s old news at this point, but I’m equal parts optimistic and concerned at the news that it is taking over the Neue Galerie, located across Fifth Avenue and a little north of the mothership. Worse things could happen to the Neue… I’d be devastated if it closed down entirely. But I don’t want to live in a world or a city where small independent museums need to be hoovered up by the giants to survive. Especially if that’s the case for a museum with Lauder money behind it. Anyway, here’s hoping that the Met:Neue stays close to exactly how it is now. And, optimistically, maybe my Met membership will get me a little pull to skip the line at Café Sabarsky. Somehow I doubt that.
That’s my round-up of all my recent thoughts about museums. Hopefully I get in the habit of writing these regularly. Though, as I’m proofreading this, I wonder if maybe it works better as video…stay tuned…