Museums & Galleries in Long Island City

If you and a friend are considering going to the Brooklyn Museum—or seeing Deborah Harry—anytime in the next year, you’d be wise to spend $35 to snag today's Groupon: a one-year Family and Friends membership to the Brooklyn Museum. Since admission to the Brooklyn Museum is normally $10 per person, if you and your art-loving friend go just twice in the next year, today's Groupon more than pays for itself. This membership is good for two adults plus up to four kids under the age of 18.Follow @Groupon_Says on Twitter.

From a stone mosaic that lined the floors of a fifth-century synagogue to the final rhyme spit out by a Jewish hip-hop artist, the span of The Jewish Museum New York's collections is as diverse as it is long. What began in 1904 with 26 artifacts has blossomed into a collection of 27,000 paintings, sculptures, and multimedia exhibits that dovetail into a collage of Jewish culture and identity from across centuries and continents.

The centerpiece of the museum is Culture and Continuity: A Jewish Journey, a permanent exhibit teeming with artifacts, videos, and art that collectively celebrate Jewish identity and the culture's ability to persevere through sometimes tragic circumstances. Artists—from 20th century French master Édouard Vuillard to contemporary American painter Kehinde Wiley—enliven the galleries in rotating exhibitions.

The centerpiece of the museum is Culture and Continuity: A Jewish Journey, a permanent exhibit teeming with artifacts, videos, and art that collectively celebrate Jewish identity and the culture's ability to persevere through sometimes tragic circumstances. Artists—from 20th century French master Édouard Vuillard to contemporary American painter Kehinde Wiley—enliven the galleries in rotating exhibitions.

Interactive exhibits such as the Archeology Zone bring kids within earshot of ancient times as they don ancient costumes and weigh, magnify, and analyze vessels just like anthropologists or careful ancient housewares shoppers. Family activities include holiday-themed art classes and workshops, and The Wind Up series invites adults into the museum for an after-hours menagerie of cutting-edge music, film, and theatre. After a day of soaking up history, attendees can nosh at Lox at Cafe Weissman, a certified-kosher cafe whose stained glass windows shine a light on the edible portion of the Jewish journey.

Drink your heady fill of culture and antiques with today's side deal. For $10, you get a single admission to The American Antiques Show, an $18 value, at the Metropolitan Pavilion in the Flatiron District. Plus, when you redeem your Groupon at the show, you'll be graciously handed a voucher for two-for-one admission to the American Folk Art Museum (one adult ticket is normally $9) in Midtown Manhattan. The American Antiques Show runs from Thursday, January 21 to Sunday, January 24 with different hours every day, which you can check out here.

In 1820, before the dawn of New York's public library system, a group of city merchants began a circulating collection of books. Now part of The Center for Fiction, that collection has grown to include more than 85,000 titles of classic and contemporary fiction, as well as literary journals and magazines.

Though readers can enjoy these works in the quiet of the eight-story building's second floor reading room, The Center for Fiction is far from a simple library. Authors, critics, and professors encourage guests to embrace reading's social aspect through reading groups on contemporary and classic works. More than 60 yearly literary events also dot the center’s schedule, inviting more than 100 writers to read and discuss their craft. Afterward, intimate, informal receptions afford readers and writers a chance to casually chat about their work or discuss the latest experimental punctuation marks.

Along with stimulating fiction readers, the nonprofit supports fiction writers with a slew of resources, from studios on the building's top floor to fellowship opportunities for emerging New York talent. Evening workshops invite writers of all levels to study MFA-level topics under seasoned faculty and bestselling authors, who cover everything from structuring stories to crafting a stronger narrative voice.

Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Times Square winds visitors through twisted halls housing more than 500 artifacts of whimsy, horror, curiosity, and intrigue. Along self-guided tours of the Odditorium, groups of awestruck wanderers interact gaze upon a two-headed cow, an albino giraffe, and the skeleton of a giant crocodile while perusing more than 20 themed galleries. Pickled heads stare out of jars and medieval torture devices such as dot-matrix printers hang from the ceiling while an authentic hunk of the Berlin wall stands in remembrance of the time it got to meet David Hasselhoff.

Outside, beneath the marquee, guests witness the antics of performers swallowing swords, breathing fire, and pushing the limits of the human body. Back inside, guests navigate Ripley’s laser maze, contorting and slithering through a room crisscrossed with green lasers. The playhouse of eccentricities—a birthday-party hot spot—and its Odd Shop stock enough insect candy and one-eyed stuffed canines to feed a pet clown for months.