MuseumNoHo
Grey Art Museum
Come for thoughtful, richly researched exhibitions that transport you across cities, histories, and art movements. Stay for quiet galleries and work that makes you smarter. This is exactly what a university museum should feel like.
Photo by Greg Navarro for Beholdr
Walk in With Us
The Grey is exactly what a university museum should be—a place to look, learn, and travel the world without leaving New York City.
Walk in, and you might find yourself in post-war Paris, surrounded by French Abstraction, or in post-Stonewall New York, when queer artists were making work that commercial galleries ignored. Or in Tehran, Mumbai, Istanbul, cities that shaped art history, but before the Grey, they rarely got wall space in American galleries.
The exhibitions here translate distant worlds into something you can stand in front of and voyage inside for a moment. It's a gift—free admission, deep commitment to downtown art, exhibitions that wouldn't happen anywhere else.
About the Museum
The Grey started in 1927 as the Museum of Living Art—the first American institution to show Picasso, Léger, Miró, Mondrian, and Arp. In 1974, it was renamed after Abby Weed Grey, who donated her collection of modern art from Asia and the Middle East. After decades on Washington Square, it moved to Cooper Square in 2024, adding new exhibition spaces for the permanent collection and rotating shows. The mission: advance art history and visual literacy at NYU.
Featured In
Routes and collections this place belongs to
In The Area
GalleryNoHo
Eric Firestone Gallery
This gallery stages beautiful shows that make overlooked art histories feel urgent again. Psychedelic mosaics, hard-edge abstraction, gestural figuration, and under-recognized American artists, many from the 70s, thunder back into the spotlight.
BookstoreNoHo
Climax Books
A candy-pink temple to rare ephemera, erotica, VHS tapes, and books on art, photography, and counterculture, curated like a great exhibition.
Coffee ShopNoHo
Eat Offbeat at Atelier Jolie
Refugee-made pastries and Turkish coffee blend deliciously in one of downtown’s most welcoming creative spaces.
Alternative SpaceNoHo
Atelier Jolie
As in Angelina. Basquiat’s former studio has been reanimated by the superstar actress into an impeccably designed living room/café concept and gallery.
