A meal and a museum

A meal and a museum

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El Museo del Barrio

Photographs courtesy of the museums

For a roundup of the best museum cafes for kids, click here.

When you and your crew have cleaned your plates at El Museo del Barrio's El Café, visit "Nexus New York: Latin/American Artists in the Modern Metropolis," which is on view through February 28. This colorful multimedia exhibition features artistic exchanges between Latino and non-Latino artists in early-20th-century New York City. The highlight is Puerto Rican artist Pepón Osorio's La Cama, a decadent bed covered with an array of trinkets, including baby dolls, religious figures, toys, a wedding-cake topper and even models of birds. At the institution's mainstay, "Voces y Visiones: Highlights from El Museo del Barrio's Permanent Collection," stop to examine Freddy Rodriguez's Homage to Tony Peña (a baseball glove cupping a gold-leaf ball) and Gabriel de la Mora's whimsical Juan Pérez, which features photographic portraits of multiple men with that moniker.

After lunch at MoMA's Café 2, power through some highlights of the museum's permanent collection. In the atrium, kids can sprawl on the padded benches and gaze upward at the Bell-47D1, a suspended helicopter whose cockpit is encased in a transparent plastic bubble, giving it an insect-like appearance. The chopper illustrates the concept that art can be many things—even an efficient machine. In the Architecture and Design Galleries, examine Joe Colombo's Tube Chair of Nesting and Combinable Elements, four hollow cylinders covered in candy-apple-red fabric that form a seat. Jackson Pollock's famed One: Number 31, 1950 is on the same floor. The painting's vast size and inherent messiness will appeal to finger-painters.

Next, prepare to battle crowds as you venture into the Tim Burton exhibit (on view through April 26), which includes sketches and paintings from the auteur's adolescence as well as props from his best-known projects. After proceeding through a Beetlejuice-inspired entryway with carnival-like striped decor and a black-lit room inhabited by Oogie Boogie from The Nightmare Before Christmas, you'll enter a section called "Surviving Burbank." Here your kids can peruse artwork created by a teenage Burton as well as a children's book he made in high school called The Giant Zlig. Also on view are costumes and puppets, including foam-latex, aluminum and steel figures from James and the Giant Peach and his muse Johnny Depp's outfit from Edward Scissorhands.

Following your lunch at the Rubin Museum's Café @ RMA, check out the second floor's permanent exhibit, "Himalayan Art: What Is It?," to learn how plants and semiprecious stones are ground into pigments as well as what differentiates Himalayan art from other cultures' output. Next, walk through "Visions of the Cosmos" (on view through May 10); the exhibit consists of images of space taken from the Hubble telescope which were provided by the American Museum of Natural History (it's cheaper and less dizzying than a trip to the planetarium). Visitors will also get a crash course in Eastern and Western notions about what exists in outer space by viewing Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and Jain images of the cosmos.

After lunch at Scandinavia House's Smörgås Chef, explore the highly interactive "A Child's Adventure in the Swedish Countryside: A Storybook Installation," designed to help youngsters connect with classic and contemporary storybooks from Sweden. Created by artist and set designer Sarah Edkins, the exhibit features breathtaking murals, hanging umbrellas, elevated "grass"-covered platforms, a hut and tent, and a faux lake fashioned from mirrors, all of which immerse visitors in a plethora of literary worlds. Each area in the room corresponds to a different tale; the books (mostly in Swedish) are, of course, resting nearby.—Compiled by Julia Israel

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• Best museum cafes for kids
• Museums & Sights articles
• Eating articles
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