NYC Rainy Day Museum Planner: Film and Sculpture in Queens

Queens has two museums that make a rainy day feel planned rather than rescued. The Museum of the Moving Image sits on a quiet Astoria block a few minutes from the Steinway Street station on the M and R, and the Noguchi Museum occupies a converted factory near the East River in Long Island City. Together they make a rainy day museum planner with one longer hop between them, best done by cab.

The museum opened in 1988 in a building that belonged to the Astoria Studios complex, where Paramount shot films in the 1920s, and its 2011 expansion by Leeser Architecture gave it the bright white facade and a lobby that feels like a modern theater. On a wet morning, the blue-lit amphitheater just past the entrance is where people pause to shake off umbrellas and watch whatever short film is looping on the wall.

The core exhibition, Behind the Screen, shows how moving images get made: vintage cameras and projectors, makeup and prosthetics, costumes, sound mixing stations and interactive stops where you can dub your voice over a film clip or make a short stop-motion sequence. Teenagers tend to spend the longest at the editing and sound stations, and adults usually end up lingering over the old television sets and arcade cabinets.

The Jim Henson Exhibition, opened in 2017, is what many visitors come for: Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Big Bird, Bert and Ernie and puppets from The Dark Crystal, along with Henson's sketches, scripts and early television work. The gallery is fairly compact, so on rainy weekends it can feel crowded. Go there first when the doors open, then move to Behind the Screen when the families arrive.

The museum runs a full film program in its theaters, including retrospectives, restorations and family matinees, so on a day of steady rain a screening can turn the visit into a whole afternoon. Check the calendar when you book and consider building the day around a film rather than the galleries. The museum café near the lobby is the easiest place to wait out a shower between a gallery and a screening.

Astoria itself is good walking on a dry day, but in heavy rain the blocks between the museum and the subway have few awnings. Steinway Street is the closer station. The 36th Avenue stop on the N and W is a slightly longer walk. Wear proper shoes, because the residential sidewalks collect puddles around the tree pits.

Isamu Noguchi designed and opened the Noguchi Museum in 1985, converting a former industrial building across the street from the studio where he had worked since the 1960s. It is one of the few museums in the country created by an artist to show his own work, and the galleries hold his basalt and granite sculptures, bronze and aluminum pieces, Akari light sculptures and stage designs he made for Martha Graham.

The galleries are calm on any day, and rain adds to that: grey light falls through the windows onto the stone, and visitors speak in low voices. One detail matters in bad weather: part of the ground-floor gallery is open to the sky around a tree, and the sculpture garden is outdoors, so those sections get wet. The upstairs galleries and the rest of the ground floor stay dry.

Plan around an hour here. The second floor holds rotating exhibitions that look closely at one part of Noguchi's work, from furniture and gardens to theater sets, and on a damp afternoon it is the warmest, most comfortable part of the building. Socrates Sculpture Park sits across Vernon Boulevard, but it is an open-air waterfront park. Save it for a dry visit.

This is the one part of the day that needs a plan. The Noguchi Museum is roughly a fifteen-minute walk from the Broadway stop on the N and W, through streets with little shelter, so in steady rain a short cab or rideshare from the Moving Image museum is the sensible choice. It takes about ten minutes and drops you at the door. On a lighter drizzle, the walk west toward the river is pleasant.

This route works best for people who want contrast. The Moving Image museum is noisy, hands-on and full of familiar characters, and the Noguchi Museum is slow and silent, with nothing to press or play. Families with younger kids may want to stop after Astoria, since the Noguchi galleries ask for quiet. Couples and solo visitors tend to like ending in Long Island City, where the stone rooms feel like a deliberate cool-down after the bustle of the screen galleries.

The Queens Museum in Flushing Meadows Corona Park holds the Panorama of the City of New York, a scale model of all five boroughs built for the 1964 World's Fair, and its building hosted the United Nations General Assembly from 1946 to 1950. It is worth a whole trip, but from the 7 train at Mets–Willets Point you cross a long, exposed stretch of park to get there. In real rain, save it for another day or go by car.

Book timed tickets online for the Museum of the Moving Image on weekends, when the Henson gallery is busiest. The Noguchi Museum is smaller and rarely needs a long wait, but it asks visitors not to touch the stone sculptures, and children should keep to the walkways. Both museums have bag checks. Leave dripping umbrellas at the entrance stands.

When you are done, ask Karpo in the Karpo APP for a warm place to eat in Astoria, which is known for Greek tavernas and bakeries, or a cozy bar near the train home. Tell it where you are and how many people are with you, and Karpo comes back with a few options.