Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum is New York City's second-largest art museum, opened in 1897 in a Beaux-Arts building by McKim, Mead & White on Eastern Parkway. The original plan was four times the present size; Brooklyn's 1898 consolidation into Greater New York halted the expansion, leaving a fragment of the intended palace. The Egyptian collection is one of the finest outside Cairo, including a 14th-century BCE wooden head of Queen Tiye. Since 2007 the ground floor has housed Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party, a landmark of feminist art, in a purpose-built triangular gallery. The museum also shows Vermeers, colonial American portraits and a strong African American art wing. Monthly First Saturday evenings draw tens of thousands for free admission.