MoMA

MoMA invented the idea that modern art deserved its own museum, and a century of first-pick collecting shows: this is where Van Gogh's Starry Night lives, and Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Dalí's melting clocks, Monet's room-length Water Lilies, Warhol's soup cans, Hopper's gas station — the reproductions-on-dorm-walls canon, wall after wall of the originals. Unlike the Met, MoMA is finishable: the collection highlights fit a focused three-hour morning, which makes it the highest-density art experience in the city.

The 2019 expansion rehung everything on a principle worth knowing before you go: chronology is loose, and galleries mix painting with design, film, photography and objects — a helicopter hangs near the abstract expressionists; the design collection's original Pac-Man is a few rooms from Rothko. Start on floor five (1880s–1940s, where the crowd-magnets cluster), take it down through four (the New York School: Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning at full scale), and give floor two's contemporary galleries whatever energy remains.

Starry Night has a permanent crowd two-deep; go to it first at opening or last before close, and see the rest of floor five in peace either side. The sculpture garden — free-access design masterpiece with its Picasso goat and reflecting pool — is the reset button between floors, and the fine-dining room off it (The Modern) holds two Michelin stars if the visit is an occasion.

Timed tickets online; the skip-the-line entry earns its keep on wet weekends when 53rd Street queues to the corner. Note the SUMMIT combo ticket if you're doing both — the pairing (canon in the morning, mirrored skyline at sunset) is the best art-plus-view day in Midtown.