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NYC History, Museums on a Budget - Page 2

© Jeanne-Michele Vigna

Located at 1109 Fifth Avenue and 92nd Street, The Jewish Museum is not only Pay-What-You-Wish on Tuesday's, but if you mention its web site or bring in a printed page of it, you'll receive 50 percent off admission on any day. What began as the library of Judge Mayer Sulzberg back in 1904 has grown into the one of the most comprehensive collections of Jewish history and artifacts in New York City. Current exhibits include Berlin Metropolis: Jews and the New Culture (1890-1918), John Singer Sargent: Portraits of the Wertheimer Family, and The Changing Face of Family: Photographs from the Collection of The Jewish Museum. Though not a part of Museum Mile, at 125th Street and Fifth Avenue, one can begin its tour of Harlem by visiting The Studio Museum of Harlem. While it may cost $5.00 to enter, it is free for everyone on the first Sunday of each month. Devoted to historical and contemporary works of African-American artists, the Studio Museum of Harlem first opened its doors in 1967 in a rented loft. Recent subjects have included Wilfredo Lam and His Contemporaries (1938-1952), and Explorations in the City of Light: African American Artists in Paris (1945-1965). With over 1,500 pieces, The Studio Museum of Harlem's permanent collection is broken up into three categories-Nineteenth and Twentieth Century African-American Art, Twentieth Century Caribbean and African Art, and Traditional African Art and Artifacts. Other interesting museums can be found around the city and its boroughs. At 61st Street, one cane find the Abigail Adams Smith Museum, the only museum to portray hotel life in the nineteenth century. The building was originally a carriage house in 1795 for Col. William Stephens Smith and his wife Abigail (President John Adams' daughter). After a series of changing hands it became the Mount Vernon Hotel in the late 1820s, residence for the Standard Gas Light Company for a while, and eventually a museum in 1939. It costs only $2.00 to enter and see how hotel life once was. What was once one of the country's leading ports, is now one of the country's leading tourist attractions. The South Street Seaport still has cobblestone roads, fisherman throwing trout, historic ships dating from 1885 to 1930 docked in the Hudson, and 19th century architecture still in tact. It is free to walk the area, but $6.00 to enter the museum. Current exhibits include While the City Sleeps: An Artist Paints the Fulton Fish Market and Flesh and Blood: New Yorkers Search for Their Immigration Ancestry. At the Melville Gallery, (also part of the Seaport) A New Waterfront for a New Century: Photographs from the New York City Municipal Archives (1890-1920), is on display.

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