Cover image: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, c. 1974-9, ceramic, porcelain, and textile. The Brooklyn Museum, New York. Photo by A Scholarly Skater.
At two centuries and counting, the Brooklyn Museum is one of the oldest art museums in the United States. Home to major collections of American and ancient Egyptian art, it’s also significant for displaying Judy Chicago’s famous feminist installation The Dinner Party. A huge special exhibition called Solid Gold and the recent re-installation of the American galleries seemed like great reasons for me to pay this museum a visit for the first time in quite a while.
The Collection
Being one of the first U.S. art museums to collect works by American artists, the Brooklyn Museum is blessed with a major collection of American art. These galleries were recently reinstalled in a new arrangement that displays historical, Native, and contemporary American artworks together according to vague themes. There is also a visible storage area on this level. The scope of the collection is fantastic, though the juxtaposition of visually and historically dissimilar artworks takes some getting used to, as does the strong sociopolitical focus of the texts.
Ancient Egyptian art is another major area for the Brooklyn Museum, and it fills much of the third floor in a series of themed galleries. I found those concerning ancient Egyptian burials and mummification to be most compelling. In addition to a (rather respectfully displayed) mummy, this gallery contains several colorful mummy cases and coffins, a lengthy Book of the Dead scroll, funerary equipment, and more. I also enjoyed a small exhibition about art related to the young King Tut, and there are several more galleries as well.
Other areas of the museum include smaller collections of Asian art, Islamic art, and 20th-century decorative arts, as well as a great set of ancient Assyrian reliefs and some large-scale contemporary artworks. The African section is currently under renovation, but a few pieces are on display in a small gallery. Unusually, European art doesn’t seem to be a major focus for the Brooklyn Museum. It has no dedicated gallery for this topic at the moment, though some pieces do appear in special exhibitions. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, but it is uncommon enough to be worth mentioning.
Learn to think like an art historian.
An exhibition celebrating the museum’s 200th anniversary showcases objects in all areas of the collection, as well as a timeline of the institution’s history and development. It hints at how many fabulous objects must languish in this museum’s storage at any given moment. (The Brooklyn Museum seems to suffer from a lack of exhibition space even more acutely than most.) This exhibition, entitled Breaking the Mold: The Brooklyn Museum at 200, will be on view until February 2026.
The Dinner Party
The Brooklyn Museum is also home to Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party (1974-9). This huge installation, one of the museum’s main attractions and a landmark of feminist art, imagines a gathering for 39 of world history’s most important and influential women. The guest list includes ancient goddesses, queens and other leaders, prominent religious women, artists, writers, scientists, activists, and more. Each attendee gets her own place at this unusual triangular table, including an elaborately embroidered runner and large ceramic plate personalized to her and her achievements. Nearly a thousand other significant women are named on the tiled floor. The Dinner Party has its own triangular gallery for 360-degree access, and there is plenty of interpretive material nearby.
The Dinner Party is part of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, though most of the center’s other galleries were being reinstalled during my visit. I believe they normally show temporary exhibitions of modern and contemporary female artists. A large number of female artists are also showcased in the American galleries, including Alma Thomas, Florine Stettheimer, and Emily Sargent (the sister of better-known John Singer Sargent, her work has been receiving attention recently).
Solid Gold
The highlight of my visit, as well as the main reason for it, was Solid Gold. This huge thematic exhibition explores the myriad historical, cultural, and artistic connotations of gold as a precious metal, color, and concept. It includes over five hundred objects representing nearly all times, places, and art forms. Examples include jewelry and watches, coins, paintings, porcelain, fashion, textiles, manuscripts, perfume bottles, furniture, photographs, videos, and installation art. There’s a special focus on fashion and pop culture, with movie costumes and designer clothing making up a large percentage of the exhibition. Videos, dramatic lighting, projections, and sound effects provide a cool element of spectacle beyond what you’ll find in the typical art museum exhibition. This is a huge show – I browsed it for at least two hours – and I highly recommend it.
Understand the messages that art exhibitions share with their viewers.
Solid Gold runs until July 6, 2025. You’ll have to pay an extra $5 beyond regular museum admission, and you can only enter the show once for that price. However, considering the incredible amount on view, it’s totally worth the extra cost. The museum holds special exhibitions regularly, with a big Monet show coming up next, though I’m not sure if they commonly have the same wow factor as this one.
Review
I saw lots of cool stuff at the Brooklyn Museum. The Solid Gold exhibition alone was worth the trip, and I believe everyone should see The Dinner Party at least once if possible. The building is lovely, and the collection is rich. On the other hand, I didn’t always feel that the curatorial choices here did the artworks justice.
Personally, I enjoy exhibitions best when they have strong points of view that enhance my experience – when they teach me something about the artworks on display, draw meaningful connections between them, or suggest interesting ways of interpreting them. Maybe I was in the wrong frame of mind during my visit, but I just didn’t find a lot of that in this museum, and even when I did, the message felt garbled. I was frequently unsure what ideas I was meant to take away from particular galleries and exhibitions. As much as I loved Solid Gold, for example, I struggle to describe its main ideas beyond a basic level. I often found myself wondering how lost I might feel if I didn’t have so many more interpretive tools in my skill set than most other viewers.
Expert guidance for your next art museum adventure
All that said, it’s very possible that I’m being too harsh. The Brooklyn Museum definitely stands in the shadows of its more prominent next-door neighbors in Manhattan, and it’s probably unfair to (consciously or not) compare it to peerless museums like the Met and MoMA just because of geographic proximity. So give it a chance and tell me if I’m wrong.
Practicalities
The Brooklyn Museum is located at 200 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, New York. General admission costs $20 for adults, and admission to special exhibitions like Solid Gold is another $5. Apparently, you can pay what you wish if you buy a ticket from the admissions desk rather than online or at a kiosk, but this option is not well publicized. And since I’m not afraid to admit that I like my amenities, I’ll add that the museum has a nice cafe with yummy pastries, a gift shop, and an adjacent parking lot with fairly reasonable prices.
The Brooklyn Museum also has a cool art vending machine called Mystry Mart, which offers packets featuring small artworks by participating artists. The mystery part comes from the fact that you don’t know what’s you’ll get until you open it, but each packet is clearly labeled with the artist’s Instagram handle, so you can check them out before making your selection. You can find Mystry Mart on the ground floor near the elevators. Packets cost between $10 and $30 dollars, and the machine is credit card-only. For $15, I got a large sticker and pin by Space Rabbit Studios. They’re delightful, albeit pricey. I love how this is both an art installation and an art dispenser at the same time.
