A museum where modern art becomes a shock of recognition. MoMA — Museum of Modern Art is one of New York’s essential art experiences: Van Gogh, Picasso, Warhol, Pollock, Kahlo, Matisse, design, film, photography and the restless invention of the modern world.
At MoMA, you can move from iconic masterpieces to radical objects that changed what art could be. The experience is dense, emotional and sometimes overwhelming — so don’t try to see everything.
You may experience:
- Van Gogh’s The Starry Night
- Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
- Monet’s Water Lilies
- Dalí, Matisse, Mondrian, Warhol, Pollock, Rothko and Kahlo
- Photography, film, architecture and design
- The Sculpture Garden
- Major temporary exhibitions and collection rotations
Give yourself at least 2–3 hours. Start with the collection highlights, then leave time for one floor or exhibition you did not expect. MoMA is at its best when it surprises you.
Don’t visit MoMA only for The Starry Night. Go for the story of modernity itself: how artists broke the image, rebuilt the body, questioned reality, and made art feel like the present tense.
Don’t miss The collection galleries around the modern icons — MoMA’s power is not one masterpiece, but the sequence of ideas.
About the venue
More info
MoMA — The Museum of Modern Art in New York is one of the world’s essential museums for modern and contemporary art. Located on West 53rd Street in Midtown Manhattan, MoMA is known for its extraordinary collection across painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, design, film, media and performance. Its collection contains almost 200,000 works, including some of the most recognisable artworks of modern art, such as Van Gogh’s The Starry Night and Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans. For travellers, MoMA is one of the best places to understand how modern art changed visual culture, from Post-Impressionism and Cubism to abstraction, Surrealism, Pop, Minimalism, design and contemporary practice. It is a dense, must-see museum that rewards both first-time visitors and serious art lovers, and it works especially well as part of a New York art route with the Guggenheim, The Met, Whitney Museum and New Museum.
Worth the trip
Absolutely. MoMA is one of the strongest art reasons to travel to New York.
What makes it special is its role in shaping the idea of modern art for the world. Many museums preserve art history; MoMA helped define what modern art history would look like.
For Artlovers, MoMA is essential because it shows art as change. Not only beauty, but disruption, risk, technology, desire, anxiety, colour, speed and freedom — the whole modern mind, gathered in one museum.
MoMA The Museum of Modern Art
11 W 53rd St, New York, NY 10019, USA
Hours & rating from Google
Nearby route ideas
Nearby route ideasModern canon route
MoMA + Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum + Neue Galerie.
A strong route for modernism, architecture and early 20th-century art.
Big New York museum route
MoMA + The Met + Whitney Museum of American Art.
Use this across two days, not one.
Midtown art + design route
MoMA + MoMA Design Store + Rockefeller Center + nearby architecture walk.
Modern + contemporary contrast route
MoMA + New Museum.
MoMA gives you the modern canon; the New Museum gives you the experimental present.
Artlovers first-time New York route
The Met for world art, MoMA for modern art, Guggenheim for architecture, Whitney for American art, New Museum for the downtown contemporary scene.
On show now
Exhibitions at MoMA The Museum of Modern Art
Brancusi - The Artist and His Studio
Moma Permanent Collection
Architects of Liberation: Modernism in Western Africa
The Surrealist Book: Tomorrow Lives in Mirrors
Jakob Kudsk Steensen: Wetland
It’s Alive! A Century of Animation from the Collection
Pierre Huyghe - UUmwelt
Taking Back Our Space: Photographic Perspectives
Na Mira NO SMOKING
