Brooklyn Museum: Tickets, Highlights and Free Saturdays

The Brooklyn Museum is the third largest museum in NYC after the Met and the American Museum of Natural History. It's also one of the biggest and oldest museums in the United States, and one of the most fun on the first Saturday of every month.

Here I'll walk you through all the reasons it's worth visiting one of New York's most important cultural institutions outside Manhattan, housed in a majestic 1898 building surrounded by parks and elegant neighborhoods that speak of another era.

Brooklyn Museum Collections

The Brooklyn Museum holds a permanent collection of roughly 1.5 million works. It also runs several rotating temporary shows; to see what's on, check the official site.

Below I'll tell you about the museum's permanent exhibitions (beyond the striking building, which is a piece of history in itself).

Permanent Collection

Among its permanent galleries, the standout is the collection of Egyptian antiquities spanning more than 3,000 years of history. There are mummies, of course, in case you were wondering 😜.

The Brooklyn Museum's ancient Egyptian art collection is one of the finest in the United States. It includes more than 1,200 objects: sculptures, reliefs, paintings, pottery and papyri.

Beyond that major Egyptian collection, the Brooklyn Museum's Middle East galleries display examples of cuneiform art and stone murals from the Assyrian culture.

There's also a notable showing of African, Asian, European and American art (if you're after a lot of American art, head to the Whitney Museum).

Highlights include pieces by Mark Rothko, Edward Hopper, Norman Rockwell, Winslow Homer, Edgar Degas, Georgia O'Keeffe, Max Weber and a series of sculptures by Auguste Rodin.

A brief history of the Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum was founded in 1898 with the ambition of becoming the largest art museum in the world. It obviously never got there, thanks to budget problems and the sheer difficulty of running a collection and a building of that scale. Even so, it's the largest museum outside Manhattan, which is no small feat.

The museum was built on land that belonged to the Lenape people. As a sign of respect, it hosts exhibitions, events and permanent references to the culture and traditions of the original nations who were here before the Dutch, the English and the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who gave today's many-sided New York its face.

Nearby stops you shouldn't miss

The museum sits next to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the stately Brooklyn Public Library, Grand Army Plaza and Prospect Park, Brooklyn's Central Park, which was in fact designed by the same landscape architects.

Practical info for visiting the Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum sits between the Prospect Heights and Park Slope neighborhoods and, as I mentioned, it's part of the same complex as the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Prospect Park. Brilliant urban planning.

Address

200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn

How to get there

Subway lines 2, 3, 4. Eastern Parkway-Brooklyn Museum station

Prices

Adults $16

Students $10 (valid ID required)

65+ $10

Under 19 free

On the first Saturday of every month admission is free from 5 pm, but you need to reserve a ticket on the website. That night there are events and live bands, which is why I said it's such a fun museum.

Hours

Wednesday to Sunday 11 am to 6 pm
On the first Saturday of each month it stays open until 11 pm

Closed Mondays and Tuesdays, and on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day.