How to experience NYC's amazing art offerings for free or on the cheap
By Ryan Kailath
January 28, 2024
If it feels like seeing art in New York City is getting more expensive, that’s because it is. The Whitney, the Guggenheim and MoMA raised their prices 20% last year, with the museums all charging $30 for general admission now.
The Met Museum may have started the trend in 2022, when it raised prices for out-of-towners, though admission is still pay-what-you-wish for city residents.
“For a lot of people, they don’t know if they’re going to like the art or not,” said Ellen Swieskowski, founder of the free app See Saw, which aggregates information about what’s currently showing in art galleries. “It makes it difficult to just be curious and give things a chance when you have the high stakes of the high admission price.”
Thankfully for New Yorkers and many visitors as well, the city has an abundance of free or more affordable ways to engage with the arts.
Public art
New York is home to a wealth of public art, much of it on permanent display in unlikely “galleries,” including the subway and the city’s public hospitals. Both systems have amassed substantial art collections over the years, with works from Yayoi Kusama, Keith Haring, Helen Frankenthaler, Andy Warhol and hundreds more artists.
To find subway art, visit MTA Arts & Design. Favorites include William Wegman’s canine mosaics at the 23rd Street F/M station and the flipbook-like “masstransiscope” that appears through the windows of moving B/Q trains in Brooklyn.
The city also boasts rotating exhibits sponsored by organizations like the Public Art Fund and often installed in venues like Lincoln Center or Madison Square Park.
Rockefeller Center hosts public art projects, and recently featured Melissa Joseph, whose work has been acquired by the Brooklyn Museum.
The projects are generally free to walk by, though the occasional exhibit requires free reservations.