9 Best Sights in New York City, New York

Bushwick is well known for its street art, as the Brooklyn graffiti scene endures with colorful, larger-than-life murals. It's all encouraged, supported, and curated by this urban art collective, under the helm of Joseph Ficalora. The outdoor street art gallery is omnipresent as you walk Troutman Street and the adjacent blocks of St. Nicholas Avenue and Wyckoff Avenue, the area's main drag. Fans of global street art will recognize featured artists, including Carlitos Skills, Ruben Ubiera, and Mr. Blob.   Every summer, the Collective throws a block party that's a mix of DJ music, food trucks, and local makers selling their wares. Check their website for details.

This busy traffic circle at Central Park's southwest corner anchors the Upper West Side and makes a good starting place for exploring the neighborhood. The 700-ton, granite monument in the circle's center, capped by a marble statue of Christopher Columbus, serves as a popular meeting place. To some people, Columbus Circle is synonymous with the Deutsche Bank Center (formerly Time Warner Center) building and its several floors of shops, restaurants, and quick-bite cafés. The Whole Foods market and the food hall Turnstyle (on the subway-station mezzanine) are good spots to pick up sandwiches or sushi for a Central Park picnic. The building is also home to the Rose Hall performing arts complex, part of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Keep an eye out under and around the Manhattan Bridge and the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway, where walls display longstanding street art by the likes of CAM, Cey Adams, Apolo Torres, and Yuko Shimizu. The project is sponsored by the DUMBO Improvement District and the New York City Department of Transportation Urban Art Program.

Before street art was a respected form, an artist named Ray “Sting Ray” Rodriguez wanted to create a safe space for Harlem artists to hone their craft. Over generations, vandals, rebels, and artists alike left their artistic gems at great risk. More than 40 years later, graffiti and mural art have evolved from the underworld of subway trains to now adorn walls aboveground. Today, the Graffiti Hall of Fame lines the concrete walls of Jackie Robinson Educational Complex’s schoolyard and still welcomes locals and artists, along with photographers and fans of the medium.

It's hard to miss the giant mural on the northwest corner of Houston Street and the Bowery, though the artwork itself is constantly changing. It started back in 1982, when Keith Haring, along with his pal Juan Dubose, painted what is believed to have been Haring's first large-scale work. Real estate developer and arts visionary Tony Goldman (he's responsible for Miami's Wynwood Walls) acquired the wall in 1984 and used it for advertisements until 2008, when he and art curator Jeffrey Deitch commissioned a tribute to Haring for what would have been the artist's 50th birthday. Since then, an internationally recognized cast of artists have used the concrete as canvas—including Shepard Fairey and Kenny Scharf in 2010, French artist JR in 2011, and Banksy in 2018.

In 1986, local artist Mark di Suvero and other residents rallied to transform what had been an abandoned landfill and illegal dump site into this 5-acre waterfront park devoted to public art. Today, a superb view of the East River and Manhattan frames changing exhibitions of contemporary sculptures and topical multimedia installations. A farmers' market, outdoor yoga, and free public programs, including workshops and performances, are offered seasonally April to October. Socrates is open 365 days a year, 9 am to sunset, but the best time to visit is during warmer months.

Swing Low, a bronze statue of abolitionist Harriet Tubman rising from a traffic triangle at the crossroads of St. Nicholas Avenue, West 122nd Street, and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, was created in 2007 by sculptor Alison Saar. Inspired by West African "passport" masks, the striking monument incorporates the faces of "anonymous passengers" of the Underground Railroad in Tubman's skirt. The granite base includes bronze tiles that depict pivotal events in Tubman's life and traditional quilting patterns.

When it opened in 2019, the centerpiece of the new Hudson Yards development was an instant city landmark serving as both an interactive artwork and photo-op paradise. Created by British designer Thomas Heatherwick, Vessel consists of 154 interlocking flights of stairs stretching 16 stories high, resembling a gigantic, woven copper basket. A visit might make you feel like you're inside an M. C. Escher drawing. Trips to the top are paused as of this writing, but it's still well worth a peek from the the surrounding pedestrian plaza.