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NYC Museums to Visit for $12 or Less

NEW YORK — Now that the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new admissions policy — $25 for adults who do not live in New York — is in effect, out-of-towners may be wondering if it’s possible to see art in this city without breaking the bank. (Consider this: Nonresidents have to fork over a total of $100 each to visit all four of the city’s top museums — the Guggenheim, the Met, the Modern and the Whitney.) While galleries are free and often have museum-caliber shows, there are, in fact, bargains to be had for those museumgoers looking to offset costs — or for a diversity of offerings. Here’s a guide to some of the more affordable options around the city.

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NYC Museums to Visit for $12 or Less
By
PETER LIBBEY
and
NICOLE HERRINGTON, New York Times

NEW YORK — Now that the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new admissions policy — $25 for adults who do not live in New York — is in effect, out-of-towners may be wondering if it’s possible to see art in this city without breaking the bank. (Consider this: Nonresidents have to fork over a total of $100 each to visit all four of the city’s top museums — the Guggenheim, the Met, the Modern and the Whitney.) While galleries are free and often have museum-caliber shows, there are, in fact, bargains to be had for those museumgoers looking to offset costs — or for a diversity of offerings. Here’s a guide to some of the more affordable options around the city.

— Always Free

American Folk Art Museum: This indefatigable institution houses a great collection of self-taught artists. “Vestiges & Verse: Notes From the Newfangled Epic” (through May 27) is its latest envelope-pushing effort. This one examines the use of writing — journals, inventories and extended narratives — in the work of 21 self-taught American and European artists. Adolf Wölfli, Aloïse Corbaz and Henry Darger are included, but, according to Roberta Smith, the names of most of the other figures won’t ring many bells. And that bodes well. 2 Columbus Ave., Manhattan; 212-595-9533, folkartmuseum.org.
Bronx Museum of the Arts: This small contemporary-art museum “regularly hits above its weight,” Smith wrote in her recent review of “Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect," running through April 8. That “beautifully staged” exhibition, she said, “creates a remarkably full picture of an irrepressible and unfailingly DIY.maverick who is revered as one of the prime movers in the juggernaut of conceptual, process and performance art that emerged in the late 1960s and ‘70s.” 1040 Grand Concourse, the Bronx; 718-681-6000, bronxmuseum.org.
National Museum of the American Indian: In his celebration of the new installation of this museum’s permanent collection in 2010, Holland Cotter wrote, “American Indian art is some of the most beautiful ever made anywhere on earth.” And this museum holds the most significant collection of this beautiful art in New York. In addition to archaeological and ethnological pieces hailing from a wide variety of tribes, Modern and contemporary art are also well represented. “Transformer: Native Art in Light and Sound,” an exhibition of work by artists who use light, projection and nontraditional media, is open through Jan. 6, 2019. Alexander Hamilton United States Custom House, 1 Bowling Green, Manhattan; 212-514-3700, nmai.si.edu.
Scandinavia House: This center of Nordic culture shares art, film, music and food from Scandinavian countries with the people of New York. Its current exhibition, “The Experimental Self: Edvard Munch’s Photography” (closing on April 7), showcases a lesser-known dimension of the work of this celebrated artist: his photographs (though the 50 or so images here are facsimiles, not originals). “Munch used the camera with an intimate, even playful informality,” Jason Farago wrote in his review, “and relied on blurring effects and ornery cropping to capture the same discord he brought to painting and printmaking.” A panel including artists Lori Nix, Torbjorn Rodland and Teija Isorattya will discuss the exhibition on March 10. Peter Watkins’ 1974 film “Edvard Munch” will be screened in two parts on March 20 and March 27. 58 Park Ave., Manhattan; 212-779-3587, scandinaviahouse.org.
Some others: Socrates Sculpture Park, BRIC House, the Museum at FIT and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

— Not Free, but a Bargain

Asia Society ($12 admission): Follow Italian scholar Giuseppe Tucci around Tibet through the paintings he collected on his expeditions between 1926 and 1948. These works are on view for the first time in the United States (alongside photographs of his journeys) in an exhibition titled “Unknown Tibet: The Tucci Expeditions and Buddhist Painting,” running through May 20. Asia Society is also encouraging its visitors to look closely at one piece of art with its “In Focus” series. Right now, “An Assembly of Gods,” a painting of the Chinese pantheon, is on offer until March 25. 725 Park Ave., Manhattan; 212-288-6400, asiasociety.org/new-york.
MoMA PS1 (Free for New York City residents; $10 suggested admission for everyone else): The six-decade career of Carolee Schneemann is in the spotlight here, with the first comprehensive retrospective of her work. In his review of the show, which is subtitled “Kinetic Painting,” Cotter wrote, “She’s been one of the most generous artists around: generous with her presence, her thinking, her formal and political risk-taking, and her embrace of embracing itself — across genres, genders and species.” Also on view at the museum: artist-activist Naeem Mohaiemen’s films and installations in a show titled “There Is No Last Man,” and Cathy Wilkes is the subject of what Farago calls “a delicate, downcast exhibition that unites uncanny cloth sculptures and scumbled paintings with large doses of junk.” (All three shows close on March 11.) 22-25 Jackson Ave., Queens; 718-784-2084, momaps1.org.
Noguchi Museum ($10; free the first Friday of every month): The museum’s “modest but tightly packed retrospective of the whimsically literary Uruguayan-American sculptor Gonzalo Fonseca” is worth seeing, Will Heinrich wrote in his review. But hurry — it closes on March 11. Fonseca’s sculptural work and drawings are the focus of this exhibition, with about 80 objects, primarily works in stone from the mid-1960s to the 1990s. 9-01 33rd Road, Long Island City, Queens; 718-204-7088, noguchi.org.
Queens Museum ($8 suggested admission): You’ll have to be quick to catch “Patty Chang: The Wandering Lake, 2009-2017” before it closes Sunday. The exhibition of work by this California artist integrates videos, photographs and installations into an affecting narrative about the instability of identity. In her review, Nancy Princenthal called it “engrossing and deeply moving.” In another exhibition, the women of New York’s immigrant communities are the focus. In “Real People. Real Lives. Women Immigrants of New York,” 16 of them are profiled through photographs, audio recordings and videos. New York City Building, Queens; 718-592-9700, queensmuseum.org.
SculptureCenter ($5 suggested donation): Carissa Rodriguez’s newly commissioned video “The Maid” is on view through April 2 at this contemporary-art center. “The Maid,” projected onto both sides of an enormous double screen in the main gallery, features several egg-shaped glass sculptures by artist Sherrie Levine, which she modeled after Constantin Brancusi’s marble and bronze sculptures from 1915 and 1920. Zoomed in on in upscale collectors’ homes and apartments in New York and Los Angeles, the pieces, according to Heinrich, “seem like untouchable fragments of some ideal of authenticity, value or originality that powers human history in general and the art world in particular but may not quite exist.” 44-19 Purves St., Long Island City, Queens; 718-361-1750, sculpture-center.org.
Grey Art Gallery ($5 suggested admission): New York University’s fine-arts museum currently has “one of the most unusual, ravishing exhibitions of the season,” Smith wrote of “The Beautiful Brain: The Drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal.” The show (closing on March 31) presents 80 small renderings — considered to be some of the greatest scientific illustrations — by Cajal (1852-1934), a Spanish neuroanatomist. “Together they describe a fantastic netherworld of floating forms, linear networks, bristling nodes and torrential energies,” Smith wrote in her review. 100 Washington Square East, Manhattan; 212-998-6780, greyartgallery.nyu.edu.
Also: Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art ($9 suggested admission).

— Frugal Art Lovers, Mark Your Calendars

Brooklyn Museum: Free the first Saturday of the month (except September), 5-11 p.m.; brooklynmuseum.org.
Frick Collection: Pay what you wish Wednesdays, 2-6 p.m.; free the first Friday of the month (except September and January), 6-9 p.m.; frick.org.
Guggenheim: Pay what you wish Saturdays, 5:45-7:45 p.m.; guggenheim.org.
International Center of Photography: Pay what you wish Thursdays, 6-9 p.m. (suggested minimum is $5); icp.org.
Museum of Arts and Design: Pay what you wish Thursdays, 6-9 p.m.; madmuseum.org.
Museum of Modern Art: Free on Fridays, 4-8 p.m.; moma.org.
Neue Galerie: Free the first Friday of every month, 6-9 p.m.; neuegalerie.org.
New Museum: Pay what you wish Thursdays, 7-9 p.m. (suggested minimum is $2); newmuseum.org.
New-York Historical Society: Pay what you wish Fridays, 6-8 p.m.; nyhistory.org.
Rubin Museum: Free on Fridays, 6-10 p.m.; rubinmuseum.org.
Whitney Museum of Art: Pay what you wish Fridays, 7-10 p.m.; whitney.org.

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