Description of the attraction
The Museum Mile is the stretch of Fifth Avenue between 82nd and 105th Streets. Its length is indeed about a mile (1.6 kilometers), and there are a dozen museums, including the famous Metropolitan.
The Museum Mile is a place with an incredible cultural density, one of the highest in the world. For this reason alone, the museum section of Fifth Avenue has become a prominent landmark in New York. It is amazing that cultural institutions occupy such a significant place in the structure of the most expensive shopping street in the world, where the price per square meter of land goes beyond all reasonable limits. However, this year, at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 110th Street, a new building for the Museum of African Art is expected to open to visitors, which has already declared itself as a full member of the Mile.
All Mile objects, with the exception of the Metropolitan Museum, look across Fifth Avenue to Central Park (the Meta building is the only one lying in the park itself, its main entrance is located exactly opposite 82nd Street). Starting from here, museums are distributed along the Mile as follows: Goethe Institute (German Cultural Center, corner of 83rd Street), New Gallery (German and Austrian Art, 86th Street), Solomon Guggenheim Museum (Contemporary Art, 88th), National Academy Museum (American Art, 89th), Cooper Hewitt, National Museum of Design (89th), Jewish Museum (92nd), New York City Museum (103rd), El Museo del Barrio (Latin American art, 105th) and, in conclusion, the already mentioned Museum of African Art (110th). A true connoisseur might want to add the Frick Collection, located at the corner of 70th Street, here, but this address is not formally included in the Museum Mile.
The mile is not only a topographical concept: local museums come together every year to hold a grand festival. It usually takes place in the second half of June, and on that day, the part of Fifth Avenue between 82nd and 105th Streets becomes pedestrianized. The museum itself is open after six in the evening for free, which is a rarity for New York. Long lines of people wishing to inspect the collections line up near the entrances - the townspeople and tourists are patiently standing in the morning. For those who have no hope of getting to exhibitions that day (and for impatient children), there is a noisy street party right on Fifth Avenue with music, dances, drawings on the asphalt, and performances by artists. But if the children find out that they are very close, on 92nd Street, they can enjoy Italian ice cream at Chao Bella - the holiday will continue there.
