Whitney Museum of American Art

Established in the 1930s by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, who began a Greenwich Village salon for prominent artists, the stellar art collection here features works by famous folk such as Edward Hopper, Jasper Johns, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Known for its blockbuster shows, recent exhibits have included ‘Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction,’ and ‘Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time.’

The Whitney makes no secret of its mission to provoke, which starts with the most brutal of structures housing the collection. Designed by Bauhaus architect Marcel Breuer, the rock-like edifice is a fitting setting for the Whitney’s style of cutting-edge American art. The collection is highlighted every two years in the much ballyhooed Whitney Biennial, an ambitious survey of contemporary art that rarely fails to generate controversy – even if it’s over the mediocrity of the works. It last hit town in 2010.