Peanut galleries

Photograph: D. Shapiro/ Wildlife Conservation Society

You've got to feel sorry for the permanent exhibits on display in the city's museums. Forever upstaged by the latest flashy installation or traveling show, they sit, lonely and unappreciated. Meanwhile, young New Yorkers get repeated eyefuls of dinosaur bones and Degas. So give those dinos a break and go check out three of our favorite forgotten museum gems.

Kids love miniatures of everything, from candy bars to cars. Why not their hometown? Originally constructed for the 1964 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, "The Panorama of the City of New York" at the Queens Museum of Art is a 9,335-square-foot replica of all 320 square miles of NYC, with more than 900,000 buildings (see if you can find your home). Stepping onto the platform overlooking the model feels like descending into JFK, without the turbulence. (That in-flight effect grows stronger when the scene darkens and thousands of tiny lights come on across the city.) But the real fun is picking out familiar landmarks—stadiums, zoos and Central Park are big hits with young children, as is the plane that takes off regularly from La Guardia airport. And then there's that whole Godzilla thing. A favorite kid question is, "Can I go in there?" You can't, but people do make their mark, as evidenced by the No.2 pencil floating in the Hudson.

For a more diminutive distraction, check out the Stettheimer Dollhouse at the Museum of the City of New York. This is no pre-fab Barbie Dream Cottage: The house took Manhattan socialite Carrie Walter Stettheimer 20 years to build.

Stettheimer and her sisters, painter Florine and novelist Ettie, were famous in the 1920s for the salon they held at their West 58th Street digs, which drew the likes of Marcel Duchamp and Alfred Stieglitz. The sisters managed to amass a collection of miniature masterpieces for the dollhouse from their art-world pals, including Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase and Gaston Lachaise's Venus.

For years, the house had paintings, but no inhabitants. In 1974, MCNY had dolls made to resemble Florine's paintings of salon patrons, including Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas (they look more like Edward Gorey characters).

The references might be over your kid's head, but toy-collection coordinator Sheila Clark says, "What impresses children are the little details in each room. There's a kind of magic, as you'd find in a beautiful stage set."

On to something full-size: the Arms and Armor collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In addition to the familiar Arthurian-style armor and swords of the European gallery, the Met has the largest collection of Japanese armor outside of Japan, plus arms from Islamic cultures and Colonial-era America.

Most of the armor on view was made for display, not combat (presumably, that's why they're still in one piece). Popular with the younger set are the 16th-century Milanese helmets shaped like animals and the iron Japanese masks, made in the likeness of fierce-looking gods. Even tots can appreciate heavy metal like this. Three-year-old Archie Carides has been an Arms and Armor fan since before he could walk. He says his favorite piece is "a shield with a man with his eyes crossed and his head is full of snakes and his tongue is sticking out." We couldn't locate that piece, but we'll take his word for it.

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