The Jewish Museum

This museum in New York City should be seen in context with Philadelphia’s Weitzman Museum of Jewish Americans. This is the art and culture museum, and that is the history museum. The yellow OY/YO is immediately recognizable in both museums as are the photos of European Jews landing in Coney Read more

Guggenheim Museum

I was fully prepared for the Guggenheim in New York City to be the same experience as the Museum of Modern Art downtown. It’s crowded, caters to the basic mass market, and is massively overhyped. Its interior is structurally similar to the Hirshhorn Museum in Washing D.C. Being a giant Read more

Delaware History Museum

Delaware made assisting slave escapes illegal, so participants had to be very clever about the Underground Railroad or risk getting caught. If caught, the penalty included a year in prison, a fine of $100, and being sold into slavery—a high price. Abolitionists sometimes managed to redeem the freedom of their Read more

New Jersey State Museum

The State Museum of New Jersey in the state capital Trenton is free of charge and has a strange interpretation of native people. Although Native Americans are still very much alive, their history is interpreted through archeological ethnography instead of their living cultural experiences. The State Museum of New York Read more

The Starry Night

Everyone should be able to enjoy art—focus on the word enjoy. Some art museums started banning photography in the late 2000s when smartphones started having quality cameras to boost gift shop revenue and protect delicate works from automatic flashes, but the decision has been reversed in the mid-2010s partly from Read more

MoMA

The Museum of Modern Art in New York is severely overrated. Don’t go, don’t waste your time, there is better art out there available with more dignified treatment with more democratic access. Washington, D.C.’s Hirshhorn Museum is free and has a better viewing experience than MoMa, the Art Institute of Read more

9/11 Memorial

Underneath the two square waterfalls where the twin towers once stood in New York City lies the memorial to the 3,000 who died. It sits in the original basement space of the towers with fragments of the mangled structure on display. I had previously seen one such fragment in Albany Read more