Tourists and New York natives alike find a constant source of inspiration within the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Housed in two million square feet of gallery space the museum’s collection of Egyptian art, modern masters, arms and armor and rotating contemporary sculpture installations displayed on its rooftop terrace, The Met contains one of the most comprehensive collections in the world. The Greek and Roman halls reopened in 2007 after receiving an elegant makeover, and along with massive holdings of antiquities, the institution stays current with new acquisitions, including the controversial “Madonna and Child” (purchased for $45 million in 2004).

One of the oldest and largest art museums in the country, the Brooklyn Museum offers visitors a tranquil alternative to Manhattan’s bustling institutions. Part of Brooklyn’s parks and gardens—that also include Prospect Park, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the Prospect Park Zoo—the museum has played host to some of the more innovative contemporary exhibitions in New York in recent years. From the comprehensive retrospective of Takashi Murakami, Danish video artist Jesper Just, renowned photographer Annie Liebowitz, the legendary Basquit and the mammoth 80-person exhibition exclusively dedicated to feminist art from 1990 to the present, the institution gives voice to diverse points of view. The museum’s permanent collection includes over 10,000 pieces, including collections of Islamic art, art from Africa and the Pacific Islands and even a mummy preserved in its original sarcophagus.

One of the more visionary spaces to inhabit Soho’s new cultural landscape, Dactyl explores the merging of art and science through visual and written languages. Using this as a basis for their foundation and exhibition space, Dactyl has grown into a hub where artists, writers, philosophers, filmmakers and intellectuals assemble, with personalities as diverse as Helena Christensen, Michel Gondry, Larry Clark and the street artist Neck Face exhibiting work in the gallery. Founded in 1996 by painter and neighborhood fixture Neil Grayson and novelist and teoligist Victoria N. Alexander, the nonprofit remains one of the rare spaces where art and ideas can be explored free from the demands of commercial markets.

When the Museum of Arts and Design rebranded themselves from the American Craft Museum, they opened the door to explore the intersection between art and design in countless ways. MAD’s enthusiastic chief curator, David McFadden, searches the globe for works in a variety of media realms that emphasize this convergence. It’s not uncommon to find pieces from Ghana, Iraq and Nigeria on display. In 2008, their new building—created by Portland’s Allied Works Architecture—was unveiled. Sitting at the heart of Columbus Circle, the structure features nearly double the exhibition space of its previous home. With the top floor devoted to artist-in-residency-studios, museum visitors are offered a rare glimpse into the process of art-making.

The museum itself is Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural masterpiece, housing magnificent work: Impressionist, Post Impressionist and Modernist collections. Dedicated to showing work from the 20th century and beyond, the Guggenheim has mounted site-specific exhibitions that play off the building’s unique structure, designed by artists such as Cai Guo Qiang, Jenny Holzer and Zaha Hadid. The museum’s vast collection boasts nearly 200 of Robert Mapplethorp’s finest photographs, as well as a rich number of Minimalist, Post-Minimalist, and Conceptual works, among others.

Founded in 1931 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and originally located at 10 West 8th Street, the collection now resides permanently in Marcel Breuer’s Brutalist monument. The Whitney collects and exhibits American art from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and nearly every significant contemporary American artist can be found here including Hopper, Stella, Glackens, Demuth, de Kooning, Rothko, and O’Keeffe. The Permanent Collection of some 12,000 works encompasses paintings, sculptures, multimedia installations, drawings, prints, and photographs. Focusing on contemporary works, the Whitney Biennial is the highest-profile contemporary art showcase in the country.

P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center stands out amidst the NYC art scene with its unique involvement with artists as well as its cutting edge approach to exhibitions. In the summer, PS1’s pulsating fusion of contemporary art, dynamic architecture, and experimental deejays and bands spill outside onto the art center’s patio.

Featuring works by Bellini, El Greco, Vermeer, Velazquez, Boucher, Goya, Turner, Van Dyck, Renoir, and Holbein, The Frick Collection is just as impressive as the ornate rooms in which they are showcased. Here the emphasis isn’t on style or date but rather on thematic representation and décor.

Larry Gagosian’s primary exhibition space is a daunting grand penthouse duplex showcasing modern masters like Pollock, Jasper Johns, and Arshile Gorky.

In the time since he opened a rickety poster shop in Los Angeles in the early 1970s, it can be argued that Larry Gagosian has done more to change the face of the contemporary art world than any other dealer. When Gagosian expanded his uptown empire to Chelsea in 2000 with a second gallery space, and then, six years later, a third, just three blocks away, the dealer accounted for some of the city’s most sought-after commercial real estate. Along with art world luminaries such as Jeff Koons and Richard Prince, Gagosian’s A-list roster of artists also includes Damien Hirst, who holds the title of highest paid living artist of all time.

Opened in 2000 in a former Chelsea garage, Mary Boone Gallery’s downtown location accommodates large-scale pieces and dynamic installations. Focusing on artists with a ‘downtown’ aesthetic, the Mary Boone Gallery is more likely to take chances on emerging young artists at the Chelsea location.

Deitch Projects specializes in producing ambitious projects by contemporary artists. Since opening with a performance by Vanessa Beecroft in January 1996, the gallery has presented over one hundred and twenty solo exhibitions and projects, twelve thematic exhibitions, and numerous public events. The gallery has a global outlook and has presented projects by artists from thirty-three countries.

As the exclusive representative of Francis Bacon’s estate, Tony Shafrazi brings to his galleries unique and stunning pieces from popular and revered modern artists: David Lapachelle, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Dennis Hopper, Keith Haring, and even Pablo Picasso.

Cheim & Read, founded in 1997 by co-owners John Cheim & Howard Read, focuses on the representation of an international group of contemporary artists. The work here spans from painting and illustration to sculpture and photography. The gallery also specializes in the resale of select works by twentieth-century artists including Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Cy Twombly.

The ‘downtown’ aesthetic so popular among much of ‘80s artwork has matured into middle age money. Ross Bleckner, Peter Halley, Barbara Kruger, and Damian Loeb are highlights in this midtown gallery.

Founded in 1981, the Howard Greenberg Gallery was the first to consistently exhibit photojournalism and street photography, helping to establish the genres’ place in the world of photographic art. Founder Howard Greenberg, himself a former photojournalist, has been widely recognized for his authoritative knowledge of 19th and 20th century photography, unparalleled collection of over 20,000 photographs, and fundamental role in the creation of the modern market for photographic art.

The gallery, which has recently relocated from its SoHo space to the Fuller Building on East 57th Street, maintains an ever-growing collection of fine photography from such talents as Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Andre Kertesz, William Klein, Dorothea Lange, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Josef Sudek, and Edward Weston. The collection spans the history of photography, from the early 20th century Pictorialism to the 1930s Modernism to contemporary works created for industry, advertising, and fashion.

James Fuentes LLC is located in the southernmost point of Chinatown, bordering City Hall and South Street Seaport.  Founded in early 2007 by James Fuentes, who recently celebrated his 10 year anniversary of working in the art business, this unique and welcoming space presents a dynamic program of contemporary art embracing all mediums.  James specializes in exhibiting new art and occasionally historically significant work (from the 1950’s - 1990’s) by artists without categorical limitations.  Recent exhibits include Alejandro Cardenas, Arctic Cross; Roman Singer, Flower Pot; and Agathe Snow, Just Say Yes.

New development, Soho Mews, recently donated a shop front space to The Art Production Fund for a five year period.  The result?  APF Lab,  a space designed for “creative experiments”.  Artists, designers, musicians and the like are invited to create performances, happenings, pop up shops and other ongoing installations.  The idea is to provide people with a place to present outside their normal practice.  Some exhibits take place in the store front.  Others invite the spectator to enter the Lab for a more participatory experience.  Definitely worth checking out.

Located in the Lower East Side, New York’s newest contemporary museum stands tall along the horizon, jutting out where Bowery and Prince meet. Its design, by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA, Tokyo, is a monumental undertaking—a seven-foot floor stack of silvery boxes each teetering slightly off center and housing three floors of exhibition space, levels for educational and administrative purposes, and its top floor, an intimate room offering spectacular views of downtown. The New Museum’s commitment to showcasing visionary, daring work by living artists was born from founder Marcia Tucker. Less than 24 hours after being fired from her curatorial post at the Whitney Museum for staging exhibitions that were deemed too risky, this innovator created an institution that has quickly became known for provocative and inspired projects.