Brooklyn Museum - the second largest (after Met) Museum of Art in New York, has a collection of more than half a million items.

Its history began in 1823 when the library was founded Brooklyn (later one of her librarians became a great American poet Walt Whitman). In mid-century library merged with the Brooklyn Lyceum, Brooklyn forming institution - there were exhibitions of painting and sculpture. In 1890, the project started the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences - the predecessor of the museum. The grand plan called for the construction of a building for the world's largest museum. In those years, this swing is unlikely someone could surprise: the end of XIX century was a time of economic boom, it seemed - everything is possible.

In 1897, it opened its doors to the building of the museum, made by architects Charles McKim, William Mead and Stanford White. In reality it turned out four times smaller than the original plan: the project was cut when the Brooklyn lost the status of an independent city and became the New York area. Yet building in Beaux Arts fine. Facade design led a talented sculptor Daniel Chester American French, he also carved the monumental sculpture "Brooklyn" and "Manhattan", standing at the entrance (at first, they decorated the entrance to the Manhattan Bridge).

The moment was conceived this ambitious project, the future museum is located only seventeen paintings. In the first decade of the XX century, the collection grew rapidly with the generous support of patrons and collectors all over the country. This process had its costs: for example, in 1932 a well-known philanthropist Colonel Michael Fridsem museum bequeathed his huge collection (926 works), but a quarter of them turned out to be fakes.

However, today, the Brooklyn Museum boasts a collection of top-notch, including a collection of Egyptian and Middle Eastern art, European and American art, African culture, works of island cultures of the Pacific. Among the local pearls - "Lady Bird" (an amazing terracotta Egyptian pre-dynastic period), the Egyptian faience figurine Hippo times of the Middle Kingdom, the portrait of US President John Adams painter (and inventor of the telegraph), Samuel Morse, web-Auguste Renoir, Henri de Tuluz- Lautrec, Eugene Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley.

Is a museum in one of the corners of Prospect Park, near the Brooklyn Public Library and the local Botanical Gardens. Near the eastern entrance to the building it is located Sculpture Garden - a unique collection of architectural ornaments and statues of old New York. There is also a small replica of the Statue of Liberty.