Est. 2026 · East Village, New York

The Tofu Museum. Portrait of a Good Boy. Tofu in a lace collar and pearl brooch inside an ornate gold oval frame.

Five centuries of art history. One good boy.

The world's only collection devoted entirely to Tofu, a small curly dog who has, somehow, sat for every major artist since 1485.

Enter the collection Donate in his honor

The signature work

Tofu with a Pearl Earring

Vermeer's Dutch masterpiece, reconsidered. The turban is ultramarine. The pearl is luminous. The ears are, as ever, ears.

Tofu (after Johannes Vermeer)
Tofu with a Pearl Earring
c. 1665, after Girl with a Pearl Earring
Oil on canvas, ultramarine, one (1) pearl
Golden Age Gallery · TM.2026.201
Read the wall label

Highlights of the collection

From Botticelli to Banksy

Every work is an original Tofu, painted after a master and hung in the frame its period would have used.

See all twenty-six

Now on view, Saturday, October 17

The museum is leaving the building.

For one day only, Tofu and selected works from the collection will travel down Avenue B as a live installation at the 36th Annual Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade.

Look for the float with a gold frame. Inside it, seated on a pedestal in a burgundy robe, is the artist and subject himself. Behind him hangs a gallery wall of his doppelgängers, each one framed as a painting. Only one of them is real. He will be the one who blinks.

About the exhibition Plan your visit
Tofu
Portrait of a Good Boy (Living Installation)
2026
Dog, burgundy robe, pedestal, gilt frame, stuffed animals, wheels
The artist's first and only work of performance art. Viewers are invited to compare the living subject with his painted and stuffed doubles, and to consider the question at the heart of all portraiture: which one is the good boy? (All of them. The answer is all of them.)
On loan from the artist's couch · Avenue B, 13th St. to Tompkins Square
When
Sat, Oct 17Parade steps off 11 a.m.
Where
Avenue B13th St. south to Tompkins Square Park

Can't make it to Avenue B? The artist posts from the studio as @tofusosweet.

Museum directory

Find your way around

Floor 1

Renaissance Wing

Leonardo, Botticelli, Michelangelo, and a tennis ball.

 Floor 1

Golden Age Gallery

Home of the Pearl Earring. Please keep your voice down; he's sleeping.

 Floor 2

The 19th-Century Rooms

Impressionism, Romanticism, and one very loud Scream.

 Floor 3

Early Modern Galleries

Klimt's gold, Picasso's angles, Duchamp's water bowl.

 Basement

The Surrealist Basement

Melting clocks. Floating apples. Time is soft down here.

 Floor 4

The Pop Annex

Warhol, Lichtenstein, Hockney. Fifteen minutes of fame, renewed daily.

 Lobby

Gift Shop

Exit through it. Everyone does.

 Lobby

Patrons' Desk

Every donation goes to Best Friends Animal Society.

Admission is free

Pay what you wish. The animals keep all of it.

Real museums have a suggested donation at the door. So do we. The Tofu Museum doesn't keep a cent: every gift goes straight to Best Friends Animal Society, a national no-kill nonprofit that helps shelter dogs and cats find homes. Tofu was lucky. Plenty of dogs like him are still waiting.

Donate to Best Friends Patron levels