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In the nineties, Emily Landau found that her 1,200-piece collection of contemporary art was overrunning her Park Avenue apartment, her Palm Beach residence, and her New Mexico ranch. So the widow of Martin Fisher, co-founder of the Fisher Brothers real-estate firm, moved much of it into a former parachute-harness factory in Long Island City. This 25,000-square-foot building, renamed the Fisher Landau Center for Art, was an appointment-only foundation until Landau and her curator Bill Katz transformed it into a more traditional type of museum in 2003. The undervisited space now houses works by major artists like Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, Kiki Smith, and Jasper Johns without the lines (or admission fee) of MoMA. Long-term installations in a variety of mediums sprawl over the three-floor exhibition space, and on each level, a staff member is available to provide what amounts to a personalized tour. You'll need it—screen-printed numbers in the lightest shade of gray are all that explain the art. The still-collecting octogenarian Landau uses the first-floor library as her office (and smoking den) when she pops by every few weeks. — Caroline Kinneberg