All the free museums days in NYC you should know about

There’s nothing quite like seeing an exhibition in the Guggenheim’s breathtaking rotunda designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Check out his handiwork and all the great art on an evening when admission is discounted at a rate of your choosing.

Pay what you wish on Mondays and Saturdays from 4-5:30pm (note: the minimum is $1)

Beyond the iconic, show-stopping displays—the grizzly bear in the Hall of North American Mammals, the 94-feet long blue whale, the prehistoric Barosaurus skeleton rearing up as if to scare the adjacent Allosaurus skeleton—is an expertly curated, 150-year-old museum that fills visitors of all ages with a curiosity about the universe.

Whether you’re interested in the world below our feet, or the cultures of faraway lands or the stars light-years beyond our reach, your visit to AMNH is bound to teach you a few things you never knew.

Admission to the museum is a suggested donation for residents of New York, New Jersey or Connecticut. However, for access to the amazing special exhibits or the mesmerizing Space Show in the Hayden Planetarium, you’ll have to shell out more.

Planted at the foot of the Highline along Ganesvoort Street, the new Whitney building boasts some 63,000 square feet of both indoor and outdoor exhibition space. Founded in 1931 by sculptor and art patron Gertrude Vanderbilt, the Whitney is dedicated to presenting the work of American artists. Its collection holds about 15,000 pieces by nearly 2,000 artists, including Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning, Edward Hopper (the museum holds his entire estate), Jasper Johns, Louise Nevelson, Georgia O’Keeffe and Claes Oldenburg.

Free for visitors every Friday evening from 5–10pm and on the second Sunday of every month. Be sure to reserve in advance.

The iconic MoMA houses a collection of 200,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, media and performance art works, architectural models and drawings, design objects and films—adding up to a comprehensive and expansive view of modern art. 

You'll see the classics from Picasso, Matisse and Pollock, plus works from women and artists of color. MoMA offers not only the greatest collection of modern and contemporary art on the globe but also a very narrow window to get in for free. 

The first Friday of every month from 4 to 8pm (reserve online in advance) for NYC residents. Free admission is also offered to staff and students of various universities as well as certain government employees. You can see if you qualify here.

The New-York Historical Society features more than 1.6 million works that explore the history of the city and the country, including exhibits, art and historical artifacts. The Patricia D. Klingenstein Library has more than three million books, newspapers, maps, photographs and more from our nation’s founding through slavery and Reconstruction and beyond.

 Pay what you wish on Fridays from 5-8pm.

This six-story museum (once home to Barneys New York) houses Donald and Shelley Rubin’s impressive collection of Himalayan art and artifacts, as well as large-scale temporary exhibitions.

Tickets are free on Fridays 6–10pm if you reserve in advance. 

Note: The museum's building is closing as of October 6, 2024.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s pay-what-you-wish policy applies to residents of New York State residents only. But hey, it's the greatest museum in the world, right? Remember, even if if you live in New York State, you’ll need one of the following as proof:

-New York State driver’s license
-New York State identification card
-IDNYC
-Current bill or statement with a New York State address
-Student ID
-New York library card

Pay what you wish at the ticket counter for New York State residents

Sure, it's hard to get into movies for free, but you can at this museum devoted to them. Museum of the Moving Image, located in Astoria, examines every step of the filmmaking process, what goes into creating video games and much more.

Free hours are held on Thursdays, 2-6pm.

The American Folk Art Museum celebrates traditional craft-based work, and the work of the self-taught, including Outsider artists. Its collection ranges from visionary works by Henry Darger and Martin Ramirez to quilts and Early American portrait paintings.

Always free (advance reservation suggested)

The Jewish Museum is free on Shabbat during regular hours! Go see its exhibits of contemporary and modern art and substantial collection of Judaica. 

Free on Saturdays and select Jewish holidays

The International Center of Photography's two floors of exhibition space on the Lower East Side often showcase retrospectives devoted to single artists. Plus, the library houses back issues of photography magazines and photographic files.

Pay-what-you-wish admission every Thursday from 6-9pm (minimum is $5)

Checking out the best in design at the Smithsonian’s New York City outpost is particularly worth it when you don’t have to pay full freight.

Pay what you wish between 5-6pm daily.

This Madison Avenue institution began as the private library of financier J. Pierpont Morgan and is his artistic gift to the city.

Building on the collection Morgan amassed in his lifetime, the Morgan Library & Museum houses first-rate works on paper, including drawings by Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Picasso; three Gutenberg Bibles; a copy of Frankenstein annotated by Mary Shelley; manuscripts by Dickens, Poe, Twain, Steinbeck and Wilde; sheet music handwritten by Beethoven and Mozart; and an original edition of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol that’s displayed every yuletide.

Free admission on Fridays, 5-7pm. Reservations are required available one week in advance.

This Queens County treasure is well worth the bus trek or car ride. As the city’s longest continually farmed site in the city (it’s been in operation since 1697), the 47 acres feels like an entirely different world compared to Manhattan.

Feed and pet the barnyard animals, including sheep, ponies and goats, hop aboard a hayride and come back during the fall harvest season when you can go pumpkin picking and attempt to find your way through the Amazing Maize Maze (yes, that’s a corn maze).

Don’t forget to stop by the store on your way out for fresh fruits and veggies grown on the premises!

Admission is free except on special ticketed event days.

Klimt’s dazzling gold-flecked 1907 portrait is known as the “Viennese Mona Lisa” and is reason enough to visit the Neue Galerie, especially for free. It’s also worth the wait on line, which, unfortunately, is unavoidable.

On the First Friday of every month, the museum is open late and offers free admission from 5 to 8pm. Admission will be granted on a first-come, first-served basis. Children under 12 are not admitted during First Fridays.

The 9/11 Memorial & Museum is one of the most popular—and certainly the most heartbreaking—attractions in New York City. Located where the Twin Towers once stood, the memorial and museum tell the story of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. eet; or 1 train to WTC Cortlandt.

New Yorkers can visit for free during New York First Mondays, a program offering free admission during evening hours on the first Monday of each month.

Founded in 1956 as the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, the Museum of Arts & Design brings together contemporary objects created in a wide range of media—including clay, glass, wood, metal and cloth—with a strong focus on materials and process.

Visitors can now watch as resident artists create works in studios on the sixth floor, and curators are able to display more of the 2,000-piece permanent collection in the larger space, including porcelain ware by Cindy Sherman, stained glass by Judith Schaechter, black-basalt ceramics by James Turrell, and Robert Arneson’s mural Alice House Wall, on view for the first time in two decades.

Tickets are half-price on Thursdays (special exhibits cost extra).

The National Museum of the American Indian is officially a branch of the NMAI in Washington D.C. and thus officially an extension of the Smithsonian Institute—which is why it’s free (well, not entirely; your taxes pay for it). If you’re down in FiDi, check out its superb holdings of Indigenous artifacts.

Always free, no ticket required.

With 750,000 objects, The Hispanic Society Museum & Library boasts the largest assemblage of Spanish art and manuscripts outside Spain. The collection includes many religious artifacts, including 16th-century tombs from the monastery of San Francisco in Cuéllar, Spain.

After a six-year, $10-million renovation, the museum's main building reopened in May 2023. Additional renovation work is planned for the museum's East Building.

Always free.

The Brooklyn Museum's free First Saturdays isn’t just for looking at art. It’s also an evening of food, drinks, performances, music and dancing.

Free First Saturday events are held on select months (February-June, August and October) from 5–11pm. 

From pre-Colombian artifacts to contemporary installations, El Museo covers the waterfront on Latino and Hispanic art. Taking advantage of its generous admission policy makes a visit that much better.

El Museo del Barrio, located in the city's East Harlem neighborhood known as "El Barrio," is the nation's leading Latinx and Latin American cultural institution. 

Pay what you wish daily (suggested admission fee of $9). 

Located on the grounds of two World’s Fairs, the QM holds one of Gotham’s most amazing sights: The Panorama of the City of New York, a 9,335-square-foot scale model of the five boroughs, created for the 1964 exposition and featuring Lilliputian models of landmarks.

Every day is pay-what-you-wish admission.

One of NYC’s more underrated institutions, the Bronx Museum features more than 1,000 works. This multicultural art museum shines a spotlight on 20th- and 21st-century artists who are either Bronx-based or of African, Asian or Latino ancestry.

Always free