Museums

Recently we've posted about a lot of cool new exhibits, but one of the great things about New York City is that you don't need to visit a museum to expose your kids to great art. Stroll around and you'll come across public art displays in parks, plazas and even on street medians. The best thing about public art? You can experience it for FREE.

Since we've noticed a bunch of eye-catching installations around town (how can you miss that upside-down elephant or those headless bodies?), we're highlighting five public exhibits so you can take your family on a DIY art tour this spring.

Each spring, the Metropolitan Museum of Art unveils a new exhibit on its roof. This week I attended a press preview of Cloud City by Tomás Saraceno, the museum's latest rooftop installation.

Inspired by bubbles, the architectural sculpture is a collection of pods made out of clear plastic and mirrored panels. Climbing into the structure feels like entering an M. C. Escher drawing. The clear panels give you the sense of floating in space with nothing below to support you, while the mirrored panels create a fun-house effect. It's a bit disorienting, a bit scary, but also lots of fun.

Looks like there's a new museum trend in town: Last month, the New York Hall of Science debuted its cool collaborative clubhouse Maker Space for families. Now the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum has opened its brand-new Design Center, where toddlers to teens can take art workshops led by museum educators and design professionals.

This past Saturday, my daughter and I went to the opening day of the Cooper-Hewitt Design Center, located on the ground floor of a swanky glass condo on the northern edge of Central Park. At 1,500 square feet, the sleek storefront space is certainly a lot smaller and less ornate than Cooper-Hewitt's landmark Fifth Avenue Carnegie Mansion home, which is currently closed for renovations. However, the center is an exciting addition to Harlem, offering a variety of design workshops, preschooler playtime and storytelling, and other kids' activities. The best part? All programming is absolutely FREE.

Although New York City is filled with fantastic family-friendly museums that we all know and frequent, we enjoy visiting off the beaten path destinations with kids. That's why we want to put the Hudson River Museum on your radar.

Located in Yonkers in lower Westchester County, this gem of a museum features a historic 19th-century mansion, art galleries, spectacular views of its namesake and, most exciting for children, a planetarium. The Hudson River Museum is just a short Metro-North train ride away and offers family art workshops and other activities every weekend.

My father-in-law is a model train lover and my kids have inherited his enthusiasm. My oldest was still in diapers when his Grandpa first took him to the annual Holiday Train Show at the New York Botanical Garden, and it didn't take him long to learn that in New York City area, you can be a railfan (yes, that's actually a word) year-round. We've rounded up our favorite places to take aspiring engineers in or near NYC.