Talk:List of museums and cultural institutions in New York City

NYPL

Does "June, 2003" in the caption on the photo of the Main Branch of the New York Public Library indicate when the photo was taken? If so, why are there no such dates in parentheses given on captions for the other photos? If not, what does the date mean? I didn't delete the date because I don't know why it's there. I hope someone explains.

Michael

Viturally always a date in a photo caption indicates when it was taken. The reason why so many photos don't have them is because many people simply don't include them (or don't know themselves) when they add a photo to an article. In some cases the date is relatively important, and others not so. You might as well leave it there unless you find it especially bothersome for some reason. --Jleon 20:31, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sort by borough?

Would it make sense to sort this list into groupings by borough, like List of New York City parks? --RoySmith 21:11, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, I think first this list should be geared toward museums specifically (i.e. just List of museums in New York City, which make up most of the list anyway, so it can fit nicely in Category:Museums in New York City. The performance spaces etc. can be catalogued elsewhere. Probably the major division should be listing by museum type (i.e. local history, modern art, etc.). Since the vast majority of museums are in Manhatttan, it would probably be wastefully repetitive to list these explicitly as a group; instead maybe we could just list the museums in the outer boroughs under their own headings. What do you think?--Pharos 19:59, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, as somebody born in Brooklyn, and who currently lives in The Bronx, I think that's a very Manhattan-centric way of looking at things :-) --RoySmith 20:20, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

To give a more serious answer, I don't have any objection to splitting museums and cultural institutions (although, in some cases, it may be difficult to tell which category a particular place fits into). I do think, however, that if we're going to have a bunch of "List of XXX's in New York City", it would make sense to be uniform in how we format them. Either break them all down by borough, or keep them all one big list for the whole city (like this article is). I'm also still not quite sure I get lists vs. categories. To a large degree, they seem to serve exactly the same purpose. --RoySmith 22:50, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• I certainly don't mean to be Manhattanocentric; I was just visualizing how long the block of Manhattan museums on this page would look, but now I think it would work just fine if the Manhattan entries were broken down by neighborhood. As to categorization, it is sort of an alternative way of working things; I don't think it's wrong in a case like this to have both a category and a list. It's probably a good thing that Category:Museums in New York City is a subcategory of Category:Museums in New York which is a subcategory of Category:Museums in the United States. Please look over Wikipedia:Categorization. I think it's a pretty necessary thing that every page should fit into the wide categorization structure in some way. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.--Pharos 21:19, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think we should sort these by type of institution, e.g. "Museums," "Music Halls," "Historical Sites," etc. If people are looking for information, it seems counterintuitive to require them to look in "Manhattan," rather than through "Museums," since an outsider might not know where a the Met is, but has heard of a museum called "The Met" and wants to know more about it. The same applies to a student who wishes to write on the museum and needs brief, unciteable, background information. This would also encourage people to explore sites based on content, not location. Perhaps location and abbreviations / nicknames could be listed after the link. I would like to attempt to organize the page similarly, and i will experiment in a few days if I recieve no objections, since inertia on Wikipedia is unbearable on a neutral article like this. Donbas 09:37, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Context

Mel Etitis marked this article for wikifying because of it's lack of an introduction, explanation and/or summary. The wikify tag didn't seem to fit well, as the article is well linked and categorized. I went with the context tag as the best alternative. The expand tag might have been interpreted as expansion of the list only. -- Kjkolb 21:44, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't strenuously object, though I find the "wikify" tage useful for its links to "how-to" material. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 23:09, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree, that link is useful. It just seemed confusing, to me, to have the wikify tag. Here's the link anyway: Wikipedia:Guide to layout. Perhaps it should be added to other relevant cleanup tags. -- Kjkolb 07:07, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Natural History

I don't like the Natural History section. It's a hodge-podge of things, most of which aren't really natural history at all. In fact, most of them aren't even museums. Any suggestions on how to re-arrange things? -- RoySmith (talk) 21:57, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I think that the grouping is good, and the only change necessary is a renaming at most. If we split it into natural history and Zoos and Botanical Gardens, then it would be a little too complex, in my mind. Your point is generally valid, but rearranging it seems strange since most other places are cultural or artisitic. Maybe "Science and Nature" is a better title. I would like to rearrange the "Sites of historical significance" section. Donbas 22:46, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

March 2008

While I don't work directly for any of the museums, my work in cultural programming means I have access to a lot of information (all citable from reliable sources. I'm not sure how I found this list, but I'm steadily working on it. Not the physical list but the museums/galleries, etc. So far I've created Bronx Museum of the Arts and cleaned up/expanded the Dahesh Museum. I think all here are notable enough to have at least a stub, but I want to expand them to the greatest extent possible. The only work I plan to do on this page is name tweaking, if necessary to clean up redirects and disambiguate, and of course add any that many not be here.  :) TRAVELLINGCARI^{My story}_{Tell me yours} 02:49, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Break it down?

This seems like it's getting to be really unwieldly -- historic houses, monuments, parks. Any thoughts on breaking it down? The museums alone is no where near complete. I think there need to be several different lists. Thoughts? TravellingCari 19:15, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Yup, seems like a mess to me. I can't help it, i have to make some corrections. To the section labelled "National Parks of New York Harbor", i added: "None of these are National Parks; all of these are listed in lower section of List of National Historic Landmarks in New York City." Because, in that list of National Parks, there are NO NATIONAL PARKS! And i made other edits. Mainly, the vast majority of historic sites listed are covered in the List of National Historic Landmarks in New York City and in the five county-specific lists of properties and districts listed on the National Register of Historic Places. doncram (talk) 02:04, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused at this edit. National Parks of New York Harbor is a part of the National Park Service so how is it that they wouldn't be national parks? Can you clarify? TravellingCari 02:07, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I hadn't followed the link to National Parks of New York Harbor. That is apparently the title of a new office or branch of the National Park Service. However they may choose to name their administrative unit, none of the following items are national parks. See List of areas in the United States National Park System which describes and lists the various types of areas administered by the National Park Service. I believe New York State has no National Parks. It does have several National Monuments, several National Memorials, several National Historic Sites, which are different. The use of the phrase "National Parks of New York Harbor" appears to be as a title to the list which follows. Better would be "Areas administered by the National Park Service in New York City". I believe there is a National Park in the New York Harbor area, in New Jersey, not subject of this list. In fact there is no place for National Parks, per se, in this list-article anyhow. There could possibly be place for the various National Monuments, National Memorials. Does this help? doncram (talk) 03:37, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

To be honest, I completely somewhat disagree and there's evidence to back it up. From the National Parks, see here and here from the National Park Service itself, which says, "there are 10 National Parks with 23 unique destinations in New York City and northern New Jersey." With all due respect to those who have worked on the articles here, I think the NPS is a bit more of a reliable source than a Wikipedia article. The National Parks of New York Harbor includes New York City, Westchester County and northern New Jersey. Gateway National Recreation Area was one of the first urban parks when it was created in the 1970s. I think your information is a bit incorrect here, there certainly are historic sites but there are also national parks. Whether they monuments belong in this article is another story. TravellingCari 03:51, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't think you should be so quick to "completely disagree". Note, the first link you provide does not give National Park usage as you suggest. It mentions "park sites" lower-case, which is not a National Park as legally defined and commonly used. The reason why the List of areas in the United States National Park System is a Featured List in wikipedia is because it is well researched and it is definitive on this; you have not just all of a sudden discovered a pattern of errors in the work of WikiProject Protected Areas (which I have joined relatively recently; i did not develop that article). See the 2nd reference in that article, which is the National Park Service's official document. There are exactly 58 National Parks in the U.S., and none of them are in the New York harbor area. (It was the Gateway National Recreational Area that i was dimly recalling.) A National Monument can be declared by the U.S. President under a specific act ("Antiquities Act" or something). National Parks are designated by some other means perhaps involving Congress. National Park is a legal term. The prior editor and you managed to find one careless (in my view) usage of the term in the 2nd of the links you provide, in a National Park Service webpage aimed for tourists. Perhaps the NPS editor there chose to use "National Park" loosely, deliberately in order to convey what they wanted, that indeed there are lower-case parks to visit, which are part of the National Park Service-administered system, although they are not technically . A tourist doesn't need the distinctions between National Memorials authorized under one act, and other entities that are legally different. The official NPS document that is the 2nd source in the List of areas article is far more definitive.

Also, by the way, I maintain a list of errors in National Park Service websites regarding historic sites, which i have used to correspond some with the NPS and to get them to fix a few of their errors. I can point out to you many many errors in NPS websites. Again the 2nd one you point to is not necessarily an error per se, as it could be an editorial decision. But we should not adopt that unusual usage in our more formal wikipedia.

By the way, i visit this page in response to your request for involvement at wp:NRHP. If you don't care for my message that this page is flat out wrong in certain respects, I am happy to spend my wikipedia-editing time elsewhere. doncram (talk) 04:19, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I offended you, but you can't be surprised that I take the NPS as a more reliable source than a Wikipedia article (using that as a general term to encompass lists, etc.) I'm sure you have and will continue to do a lot of great work, I welcome your help here but I don't think saying "oh but they're not national parks" is the answer at all if we're writing for the reader. I know how much work goes into articles, featured or not, and I accept that government documents make errors, but if I go to find a park on the main NPS site, I get the following: which it doesn't allow me to copy and paste. Even if they're not parks, they're administered by the National Parks Service under the arm, "National Parks of New York Harbor". I don't think we can completely overwrite all that and not refer to them . If we're writing for the reader who may understand these to be national parks, rightly or wrongly so from the National Park Service as well as other reliable sources, I think there needs to be some information that guides them to these articles even if it's an "unusual usage". They're operated by the National Parks Service and referred to by that entity as "National Parks" (uppercase). How do we determine it's their error and not our own? I think the issue at hand here is more related to National Parks of New York Harbor if you don't think those are national parks since we both seem to agree that the information doesn't belong here. I've changed my wording above but I don't think a government source can be completely discounted as editorial. That's just me. TravellingCari 17:08, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree that my putting "None of these are National Parks" into the article is not exactly helpful to readers, and I do agree that at first glance a NPS webpage seems preferable to a wikipedia article as a source. However you understand now I meant to refer to all the editorial effort and all the NPS sources that went into that one wikipedia article, a Featured article. I agree the issue is more with the National Parks of New York Harbor article. Responding to that i posted a summary of my comments at the Talk page, and posted notice at Talk of wp:Protected Areas. Hopefully there will be some helpful comments by others and I will probably just bow out. doncram (talk) 18:58, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll look for the other note, thanks. I think your help has been good and I know more than any one source went into the featured article, lots of work has. At the same time, I think there are other sources that need to be given weight as well. TravellingCari 20:54, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I think there's too much on this page in general. It wouldn't be a dab, but I think there's little need for the orgs to be listed on this page, but rather for this page to be links to the main articles/lists on a topic. Thoughts on that? TravellingCari 02:09, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

One idea

Strictly speaking by the current name, "museums and cultural institutions" without addressing the name issue at the moment, are national parks either? What about historic sites that do not operate as a museum or cultural center? On the name isse, I don't think it's a possible name at all. There is no way possible to list all the museums and cultural institutions in the city. I think even listing the museums alone is daunting. I definitely think other attractions (zoos, botanic gardens, parks etc.) need to be listed elsewhere. TravellingCari 02:37, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Preparation for bold edits

I think it's time to take a serious look at this list. Putting it into a table would greatly improve it, as would deciding on a focus for it. Museums are relatively easy to judge, but cultural institutions range far and wide. The Bowery Ballroom is a great music hall, but why not Arlene's Grocery? IMHO, we need to limit this list in some way. dm (talk) 19:40, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

100% agreed. This has beem on my to-do list for some time, but I know I'm not going to get to it. it needs some fine-tuning and splitting to clarify. StarM 00:58, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Ok, check out what I did with the category of Category:Museums in New York City and Category:Museums in Manhattan. dm (talk) 10:28, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

As I just said on your talk, I love it. Good call. I'm not sure I understand "society museums" but that may just be me so I'm not worried. Good job StarM 20:37, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Asia Society, Japan Society, they all claim to have small museums and at least in the case of the Japan society, they're right, it feels more like a museum than a gallery. But it's not just art, it's artifacts, etc. So, easier to put them in something called society museums. I'm sure someone else will eventually come up with a better idea, which will be easy to implement since it's all separated. We still have to decide what to do with this particular article though. I'm really tempted to do the same breakup dm (talk) 01:05, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Gotcha, guess I'm just not familiar with the term. I've always heard them called "ethnic museums" which is about as un-PC as you can get. I think the article needs to be broken up to something manageable, just don't know what the best way is. StarM 00:32, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Urban Glass and Czech Centres

Would someone who understands the formatting mind adding UrbanGlass link? I'm working on the article, but I don't want to break the table to add it. Thanks! Also, there's an omnibus listing for Czech Centres, but I think all there is to say about the NY one is already in Bohemian National Hall. Thoughts? StarM 03:00, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

2015 updates

as they're at least minorly controversial, leaving these here for discussion:

• Should ICP now be noted as the Bowery and/or should Midtown be removed as it has closed in Times Square

The ICP is still open in Midtown. The location can change after the move in 2016.Jllm06 (talk) 16:52, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

(I didn't think you meant the extra space, feel free to revert me if you did). ICP closed in January 2015 when their lease expired. Their exhibits are in Southhampton and Governors Island per their site and upcoming will also be off site. Thanks on the others you noted below. StarM 03:26, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

• should the Museum of Biblical Art be noted as closed in chart? Article is OK.

Done.Jllm06 (talk) 16:52, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

• Police Museum's Wall Street location closed. Thoughts on how to handle?

NotedJllm06 (talk) 16:52, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

• I removed under construction from 9/11. Museum opened in May 2014-feel free to revert if there's some reason that's the preferred wording

Thoughts? StarM 02:44, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Gulliver's Gate

thoughts on adding this as a redlink until/if it's created? Seemed similar to Discovery Times Square, which was here until it closed. here's info if you're not familiar. StarM 15:27, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

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Museum of the Dog

Hello, I started a page for a New York Museum about Dogs and I was not sure where to put it in this article/list of New York museums. the museum is located in NY city. 101 Park Ave, New York, NY 10178. Can anyone help me with this? Wm335td (talk) 19:48, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

I added the museum of the dog to misc. --Wm335td (talk) 19:55, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Post Covid

sorry about all the edits, tables and I are not friends. Removed UBS from defunct as it reopened last year, but unclear if it's actually notable. I know National Geographic Encounter closed, but they luckily weren't here. Did add Met Breuer (RIP). Will try to update as I can StarM 22:03, 7 October 2020 (UTC)