Visiting the Museum with Your Family

Make sure your visit to New-York Historical is the best it can be! Here are some tips of planning and suggestions for activities during your visit.

The museum has a huge collection of artworks, historical objects, and documents. There is a lot to choose from! Talk to your children before you visit to decide the galleries and activities that best fit all of your interests and needs. And visit our FAQ page to familiarize yourself with changes we’ve made to the experience of visiting a museum. Share with your children that everyone will be wearing masks, getting temperature checks, and some staff will be behind partitions. Even though our staff’s faces are covered, we are smiling when we see you back in the galleries!  

Focus your visit around a theme, such as “people of New York’ (what they wore, how they spent their days) or “streets of New York” or “New York now and then.” For very young children, playing “I Spy” or searching for colors or shapes will keep them looking closely.

Questions to keep the conversation going:

• Ask compare and contrast questions (How was this person’s life similar to or different from the last person we saw? How were their lives different?)
• Choose an object and try guess how it was used. Do you have something similar in your home?
• “I wonder…” questions can prompt further research at home. Encourage your children to identify what else they want to know.

Share your day:

We’d love to see photos from your visit! Tag them with #nyhistorykids