The Brooklyn Museum is the second largest (after the Metropolitan art Museum of new York, a collection of over half a million exhibits.

Its history began in 1823, when was founded the Brooklyn library (later one of the librarians was the great American poet Walt Whitman). In the middle of the century, the library has teamed up with the Brooklyn Lyceum, formed the Brooklyn Institute, – there were exhibitions of painting and sculpture. In 1890, began the project of the Brooklyn Institute of arts and Sciences, the predecessor of the Museum. Grand plan involved the construction of a building for the world's largest Museum. In those years such swing hardly anyone could surprise: the late nineteenth century was a time of economic boom, it seemed that everything is possible.

In 1897, opened its doors to the Museum building, designed by architects Charles Mckim, William Mead and Stanford white. In reality it turned out to be four times smaller than the original design: the project was cut, when Brooklyn lost the status of an independent city and became the new York area. And yet the building in the Beaux arts great. The design of the facade was directed by talented American sculptor Daniel Chester French, he has carved monumental sculpture "Brooklyn" and "Manhattan", stand at the entrance (at first, they decorated the entrance to the Manhattan bridge).

When was conceived this ambitious project, the future Museum had only seventeen paintings. In the first decades of the twentieth century, the collection grew rapidly with the generous support of collectors and patrons across the country. This process has had its costs: in 1932, a renowned philanthropist Colonel Michael Friedsam bequeathed to the Museum his huge collection (926 works), but a quarter of them were fakes.

However, today the Brooklyn Museum boasts a superb collection that includes a collection of Egyptian and middle Eastern art, European and American art, African culture, works of island cultures of the Pacific. Among the local gems – "Lady-bird" (the amazing terracotta Egyptian pre-dynastic period), same Egyptian faience figure of a Hippo times of the Middle Kingdom, a portrait of U.S. President John Adams to the painter (and inventor of the Telegraph) Samuel Morse paintings by Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley.

There is a Museum on one corner of Prospect Park, near the Brooklyn public library and the local Botanical garden. Near the Eastern entrance to the building is the sculpture Garden is a unique collection of architectural ornaments and sculptures of old new York. There is also a small copy of the statue of Liberty.