All the free museums days in NYC you should know about

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)

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

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 Saturdays from 6–8 pm

The Jewish Museum is free on Shabbat during regular hours! Go see its exhibits of contemproary and modern art and substantial collection of Judaica. There is a permanent exhibit specifically for children, as well as a restaurant that includes an Uptown outpost of Russ & Daughters, the iconic Lower East Side purveyors of Kosher delicacies like lox, sable and whitefish.

Free on Saturdays

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.

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 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.

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

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 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.

Founded in 1956 as the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, the institution 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.

This museum 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). 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 6-8pm.

The New Museum houses three main gallery levels, a theater, a café operated by Hester Street Fair and roof terraces. As it has throughout its history, the New Musem focuses it program on emerging—and important but under-recognized—artists. 

Pay what you wish on Thursdays, 7-9pm (reserve tickets in advance).  

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.

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. 

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.

This museum is offically a branch of the NMAI in Washington D.C. and thus offically 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 Native American artifacts.

Always free, no ticket required.

The Hispanic Society's holdings in antiquities and Old Master paintings rivals The Met, only you don't have to pay to see them.

As of early 2023, the museum is partially open while the main building undergoes renovations.

Always free.

The Frick Collection’s free night is a relatively recent policy, so by all means, jump at the chance to see NYC’s greatest collection of Old Masters next to the Met’s.

Pay-what-you-wish admission is on Thursdays 4-6pm.

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-August and October) from 5–11pm. 

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.

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.

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

Sure, it's hard to get into movies for free, but you can at this museum devoted to them.

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