Art Galleries in Staten Island
Staten Island's art scene is small but real, centered on the Snug Harbor Cultural Center on the borough's north shore.
2 galleries · green = new show this week
← See all of these on the interactive mapAbout art galleries in Staten Island
Snug Harbor, a former sailors' retirement community turned cultural campus, is home to the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art and set among botanical gardens worth the trip on their own. The Staten Island Museum, near the ferry terminal in St. George, rounds out the borough's main art offerings.
The ride over on the free Staten Island Ferry, with its views of the harbor and the Statue of Liberty, is half the appeal. These are the art spaces we track on the island.
Two spaces, and why that is the honest number
We track two art spaces on Staten Island, and we would rather say so plainly than pad the list. The borough has roughly half a million residents and no commercial gallery district; what it has instead is a cultural campus and a museum, both on the north shore within reach of the ferry, and both genuinely worth a visit on their own terms.
This makes Staten Island the one borough where the art is not really the reason to go — it is the structure around which a good day out is built. Treated that way, it is one of the better afternoons available in New York for the price of nothing.
The ferry is the point
The Staten Island Ferry is free, runs around the clock, and takes about twenty-five minutes each way across New York Harbor. It passes Governors Island, gives you the Statue of Liberty off the starboard side heading south, and delivers one of the best views of the Lower Manhattan skyline from the back rail on the way home. No ticket, no reservation, no queue for most of the day.
Take the right-hand side of the boat going out for the Statue, and the stern coming back for the skyline. Boats run at least every thirty minutes and more often at peak times, so a missed departure costs very little.
Making a day of it
The Staten Island Museum sits in St. George within a few minutes' walk of the ferry terminal, which makes it the natural first stop — you can see it and be back on a boat inside two hours if that is all you want.
Snug Harbor is the more substantial destination and requires a short bus ride west along Richmond Terrace from the terminal. The campus is a collection of nineteenth-century Greek Revival buildings set in eighty-odd acres of grounds, including botanical gardens and a Chinese Scholar's Garden. The Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art occupies part of it. Even if the exhibition on show does not grab you, the grounds justify the trip.
Budget around half a day door to door from Lower Manhattan, and check both spaces' opening hours before you go — this is the one borough where turning up to a locked door means a fifty-minute round trip for nothing. Both tend to keep afternoon hours and close at least one weekday.