Books have a unique power to transport us to faraway places both real and imagined—but they can also bring us fresh perspectives on places that are right down the street! In New York City, we’re surrounded by an incredibly diverse collection of collections: museums of all sorts and sizes, filled with everything from modern art and detailed dioramas to abstract sculpture and period furniture. Whatever you find fascinating, there’s likely an exhibit on it tucked away somewhere in the five boroughs.
This year, to celebrate International Museum Day, we’ve rounded up eight of our favorite books that take readers into New York City’s most storied cultural sites, from the Met to the MoMA and everywhere in between. Best of all, every one of the museums that you can explore through the books listed below can be visited for real by using your library card to reserve free tickets with Culture Pass! This means that you can discover these cultural wonders twice: first on the page, and then in person.
Below you’ll find some solid recommendations for adults—and then, since Culture Pass is fun for the whole family, some additional titles for kids, too! Find something that speaks to you and start exploring today.
For Adult Readers
The Magnolia Palace by Fiona Davis
Centered on the spectacular Fifth Avenue mansion of industrialist Henry Clay Frick, this novel starts out in 1919 with the story of Lillian, an artist’s model who takes a job in the Frick mansion to hide out from a brewing scandal. It then jumps to the 1960s, where Vouge model Veronica finds herself trapped in the mansion—which by then had become the Frick Collection—overnight during a blackout caused by a raging blizzard. Veronica teams up with curator-in-training Joshua to solve a decades-old mystery after discovering clues hidden amidst the museum’s collection.
Burr by Gore Vidal
The first book in Vidal’s epic Narratives of Empire series re-examines early American history through a fictional memoir of that greatest of American anti-heroes, Aaron Burr. Early on, the book features a detailed description of the interior of the Morris-Jumel Mansion in upper Manhattan, where Burr once lived. The mansion still stands today, and is now a museum preserving the history of one of the city’s oldest and most historic private homes. Its interiors look much as they did in Burr’s day, giving readers a chance to experience first-hand the history Vidal describes in his novel.
The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose
If you were lucky enough to visit the Museum of Modern Art in 2010, you may have seen artist Marina Abramovic’s famous work The Artist Is Present, in which she sat at a table and stared silently into the eyes of museumgoers for hundreds of hours over three months. This now-iconic piece of performance art is at the heart of Heather Rose’s novel, which explores how Abramovic’s work impacted several fictional New Yorkers in unexpected ways.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel takes readers on a sprawling journey through the early years of the comic book industry in post-WWII New York. In one memorable scene, protagonist Sammy Clay and his budding love interest Tracy Bacon sneak into the closed site of the 1939-40 World’s Fair, where they visit half-dismantled exhibition building containing a scale model of the city of the future. While that building, the Perisphere, is now gone, visitors can still visit the fair site, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, and get an up-close look at World’s Fair history at the Queens Museum, home to a giant model of New York City evocative of the diorama featured in the book.
For Younger Readers
From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E L Konigsburg
Feeling unappreciated by her parents, twelve-year-old Claudia Kincaid decides to run away from home with little brother Jamie in tow. The two stow away in the famous Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue, and soon stumble onto a mystery in the form of an angelic sculpture rumored to be the work of Renaissance master Michelangelo. Set amidst the Met’s encyclopedic collection of world art, this classic has thrilled generations of readers by imagining what it would be like to not just visit, but actually live in one of the city’s most beloved museums.
Another Night at the Museum by Milan Trenc
This sequel to the charming children’s book that inspired the hit movie franchise is set just across Central Park from the Met, at the American Museum of Natural History. After dozing off at his post within the museum’s oceans exhibit, our old friend Larry the night guard is awakened by a call from his daughter, who alerts him that the city has flooded because he forgot to turn off the bath! The animals of the ocean exhibit (including the museum’s famed giant blue whale) come to life, splashing about amidst New York’s many landmarks, and it’s up to Larry to save the day.
A Boy Named Isamu by James Yang
This brand-new title takes us through a day in the life of a young Isamu Noguchi, encouraging readers to explore the world with the same curiosity and sense of wonder that the sculptor brought to his work. The boy in the book, of course, grew up to become a great sculptor, creating everything from monuments and fountains to giant sculptural play landscapes. Today, his work lives on in the Noguchi Museum, located in the artist’s former studio in Long Island City. Here, visitors can get an up-close look at the works created by the creative and inquisitive mind Yang captures so beautifully in his book.
The Guggenheim Mystery by Robin Stevens
Young Ted Sparks travels to New York City and quickly finds himself at the center of an art heist in this thrilling mystery. His aunt Gloria, a curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, is falsely accused of stealing a $20 million masterpiece, and it’s up to Ted to prove her innocence. The Guggenheim’s iconic, corkscrew-shaped building is a carefully chosen setting: as the author explains, it is “a very different museum to suit Ted the different detective,” as Ted, who is autistic, has a mind that works in a unique way that makes him a keen crime solver.
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Ready to get out and visit a museum? Go to www.culturepass.nyc and sign in using your library card and PIN number to reserve tickets, completely free of charge! Culture Pass gets library cardholders access to more than 70 cultural sites, including museums, historic houses, botanical gardens, theaters, and performing arts centers across all five boroughs of the city.
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Brendan Crain is the project manager for Culture Pass, a service providing tens of thousands of library cardholders with free access to New York City’s extraordinary collection of museums, theaters, gardens, and other cultural sites. He lives in Queens, works in Brooklyn, commutes between them via Manhattan, and thinks the Bronx and Staten Island are pretty cool, too. He has favorite museums in all five boroughs.
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