A cultural guide to New York

Pop songs aren’t usually subject to fact-checking, but Alicia Keys’ Empire State of Mind stands up to scrutiny: In New York, as the lyrics say, there’s nothing you can’t do. This city’s got it all—great art, fabulous food, world-class shopping, vibrant street life, cultural offerings of every variety. The sheer abundance of goings-on in New York City presents a challenge to the visitor: How to choose?  

Most travelers wind up spending much—or all—of their time in Manhattan, the busiest and most culturally packed of the five boroughs. There’s a lot of action to uncover in the slender island’s walkable 22.82 square miles, and one of the great pleasures of Manhattan is to get out and just wander around: Pick a neighborhood, do some people-watching, let the city’s hyperkinetic rhythms vibrate through you.  

That’s the main attraction here, really—the New York hustle and bustle that has inspired legions of groundbreaking creative types. Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Andy Warhol, The Ramones, Martin Scorsese, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Lady Gaga… the list goes on. And on, and on, and on.

Art & architecture

MoMA, The Met, the Whitney, and the Guggenheim are the jewels in Manhattan’s crown, art-wise. But don’t overlook the city’s niche institutions, like Harlem’s Studio Museum, dedicated to work by artists of African descent. It’s set to reopen sometime in 2024 in a brand-new building, same location, with offsite exhibitions taking place at MoMA PS1 and other locations in the meantime. Or, a stone’s throw from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, is the petite Neue Galerie, with its collection of glimmering Klimts and delicious ground-floor restaurant, Café Sabarsky.  

And if you prefer your art-ogling 100% cost-free, there are tons of great galleries spread across the city. West Chelsea’s legendary art scene is anchored by global heavy-hitters like Gagosian, Gladstone, Pace, David Zwirner, and Hauser & Wirth; this is also the neighborhood where you’ll find the Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed High Line, the elevated park that runs along former rail tracks from 14th Street to its current terminus at Hudson Yards. Farther downtown, smaller galleries dot the streetscapes of Tribeca, Chinatown, NoHo, and the Lower East Side. Karma, with three locations strung down East 2nd Street, is one of the many up-and-coming galleries whose shows are always worth a look.  

Food & drink

Where to start? Manhattan dining runs the gamut from Eleven Madison Park’s Michelin-starred vegan to street vendors hawking mouth-watering birria tacos and pork empanadas. There’s always some new hotspot where it’s impossible to get a table—or some forever-hotspot where it’s also impossible to get a table, like I Sodi in the West Village. These days, if you’re looking for a “scene,” you can chase the crowds at Lincoln Center’s Tatiana, opened to raves less than a year ago by Top Chef star Kwame Onwuachi, or you can stick to fashionable classics like Balthazar, Omen, and Indochine.

For celeb-spotting, the smart money’s on the legendary Hotel Chelsea, once the oh-so-bohemian stomping ground of Jack Kerouac, Bob Dylan, and Patti Smith, and recently reopened under savvy new management. Its Gilded Age-inspired Lobby Bar is one place you’re guaranteed to get a proper dry martini; another is Bemelmans Bar at The Carlyle, where cocktails come accompanied by cabaret.  

Stage

New York City is one of the world capitals of the performing arts and there’s plenty to see here beyond Broadway—though, by all means, grab tickets to long-running The Lion King if that’s your thing. If not, Off-Broadway theaters abound, and they’re often the places where future sold-out Broadway shows got their start: Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play, for example, debuted at the jewel box New York Theatre Workshop in the East Village, and Tony Award-winning A Strange Loop was first performed in 2019 at Playwrights Horizons, in Midtown. More experimental theater work may be found at venues such as the Park Avenue Armory, which also programs contemporary opera, performance art pieces, and modern dance.  

Shopping

New York City has an outpost of just about every fashion brand you’ve ever heard of, whether low-cost emporia like H&M or haute houses such as Prada and Hermès. Then again, lots of big cities can make the same claim, so unless you’re dying to pay homage to Audrey Hepburn with a visit to Tiffany’s, you’re better off taking advantage of the city’s one-of-a-kind retailers. Bergdorf Goodman tops the list: The grande dame of Manhattan department stores remains a unique luxury bazaar, with an incredible selection of everything from lip liner to fine china. (The men’s shop has its own space, across the street on Fifth Avenue.)  

Watch before you go

The hit show Only Murders in the Building is a love letter to New York and the eccentrics who populate its crowded apartment buildings. For a dark take on the city, check out the 1957 film The Sweet Smell of Success—as a tartly funny, yet tragic, take on power and ambition in the Big Apple, it’s never been topped, though the HBO series Succession comes close. A sweeter portrait of New York is drawn by Nora Ephron in When Harry Met Sally, which features the indelible “I’ll have what she’s having” scene shot at iconic Katz’s Deli; Desperately Seeking Susan is a gritty fairy tale partly set amid the ’80s era downtown demimonde, which stars a young, rising pop star named Madonna. 

Then, of course, there’s Sex and the City, which gave the Ephron template a salty update and, courtesy of Carrie Bradshaw and her coterie, introduced the world to Manolo Blahniks, cosmopolitans, and Magnolia Bakery cupcakes. Documentaries also merit a look—notably, 1990’s Paris Is Burning, which captured New York City’s underground ballroom scene, and served as the inspiration for the FX series Pose.