Brooklyn Museum

Community partners

    Our relationship with the Brooklyn community is central to our role as a museum. Through our community partner program, we share our space with the people and organizations working to make Brooklyn more just. We welcome partnerships that leverage our physical space and art collections to take on the issues of our time.

    Featured initiative

    Launching April 2025: Museum on Wheels will debut during our 200th anniversary and continue beyond the celebration.

    Museum on Wheels

    Conceived in partnership with the Brooklyn community, this mobile museum can pull up anywhere in Brooklyn with touchable selections from our collection of teaching objects—plus a variety of activities.

    Learn more
    Children drawing with markers at a table outdoors, with adults standing behind

    Partner organizations

    Our partner organizations are working on the most pressing issues facing our community, including mass criminalization and climate change. Through these ongoing relationships, the Museum and our partners exchange some of the most precious resources: space, time, and expertise.

    Bed Stuy Clothes Swap

    Bed Stuy Clothes Swap is committed to changing how people relate to their clothes. The organization promotes sustainable fashion by hosting swaps and related educational programming at the Brooklyn Museum.

    Group of five adults pose together smiling in front of a backdrop that reads "Bed-Stuy Clothing Swap"

    Brooklyn Arts Leadership Collaborative

    Cultural organizations led by people of color are vital yet chronically underfunded. The Museum and Clara Tsai Foundation’s Social Justice Fund established the Brooklyn Arts Leadership Collaborative to support the leaders of these essential organizations.

    A group of ten adults pose together in a large bright room with green walls, and tables of playdough sculptures

    Custom Collaborative

    For Custom Collaborative, fashion is wearable art. The organization trains and mentors no- and low-income women across New York to work in the sustainable fashion industry. You can see their work at the Museum’s pop-up markets.

    Customer purchasing an item from a seated vendor, with clothing rack in the background

    Project Reset

    Project Reset created the city’s first arts-based court diversion program. Anyone 18 and older arrested for a nonviolent misdemeanor can choose to participate in programming at the Brooklyn Museum instead of going to court.

    Person in a blue "Project Reset" t-shirt speaks to another person facing a large, gilded artwork

    School Partnerships—PS 705

    Museum educators work with teachers to enhance their classroom lessons through custom, collaboratively designed visits.

    A group of five educators are smilling and talking to each other while looking at an artwork that is out of frame

    Share the Toy: Holiday Toy Drive and Giveaway

    At the end of the year, the Museum collects and distributes toys in partnership with Grandma’s Hands, Vulcan Society, and F.O.O.D. (Fueling Our Own Development).

    Person in a maroon turtle neck holds a variety of toys

    Community events