Among the 78 percent of U.S. adults who say they go to museums at least “occasionally,” cost was the No. 1 barrier to visitation, according to the 2024 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, a national survey from the American Alliance of Museums and Wilkening Consulting.
But it really needn’t be a barrier.
The best museums with free admission
To begin with, more major museums have free general admissions than you might think. That’s especially so in Washington, D.C., where federal government funding ensures that the National Gallery and all the Smithsonian Institution museums (including the Hirshhorn Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and the National Asian Art Museum) are free to the public.
But plenty of other major museums across the country also have free general admission. Of the museums in our top 20 list, besides the NGA, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Getty museum system, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Crystal Bridges, the Dallas Museum of Art and the St. Louis Art Museum are all free.
The Detroit Institute of Art and the Wadsworth Atheneum, meanwhile, are free for locals, and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, residents of New York state and students in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut can pay what they wish.
And of the 10 best smaller museums on our list, the Kimbell, the Menil Collection and Glenstone are all free. (If you’re seeing a pattern, yes: Texas almost rivals D.C. when it comes to free art museums.)
It’s true, you sometimes have to purchase tickets to see special exhibitions at these otherwise free museums, but the permanent collections remain yours for the taking.
Museum discounts can go far — and don’t forget free days
Even if the museum you want to visit is not free, there are so many kinds of discounted tickets that the adult general admission sticker price probably doesn’t apply to you.
One option — the one most museums would love you to take — is to become a member. Pay an annual membership fee, and — aside from a suite of other benefits — you can get in free whenever you like and as often as you like. At some museums, membership can pay for itself after just two visits.
But memberships still cost money, right? If you want to avoid paying at all, you have choices.
At the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, general admission is $24 for adults. But almost 60 percent of visitors pay nothing. How can this be? It’s simple: Children 12 and younger get free admission. Thursdays (the museum’s most popular day, when it stays open until 9 p.m.) are free for everyone. Active-duty members of the U.S. military and reserves, and military families, get in free. So do Texas Lone Star Card holders and their families, and most high school and college students.
Of the country’s greatest museums, the Art Institute of Chicago has the highest adult general admission price: $32. But Chicago residents get in for $20. And annually, the Art Institute says, it offers more free days (52) than any other U.S. museum.
Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts charges adults $27 for general admission. But you can get in free if you’re a college student or on faculty (that accounts for a lot of people in the multi-college town). And, as with the Met in New York and many comparable museums, there are a half dozen other ways to get in free on given days or with certain cards.
Check your library, bank or benefit card
One easily overlooked option is public libraries: Across the country, libraries offer patrons passes to art museums, usually on any day the museum is open.
It’s also worth checking whether your bank, credit card or employer offers museum access as a perk. And the national program Museums for All makes hundreds of museums such as the Met free for those with SNAP food-assistance cards.
The dilemmas of charging admission
Why, exactly, do museums charge admission fees at all? Why don’t they all go free?
There’s no single answer because each museum has a different ownership and revenue structure. Unlike most European museums, American museums are not overwhelmingly government funded. It goes without saying that they are expensive to run. They have to pay for the care of their collections, special exhibitions, public programs and educational activities. Admission fees bring in vital revenue.
At the Art Institute of Chicago, fees bring in about $20 million annually, which is about 19 percent of its operating budget. But at Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts, revenue from admissions accounts for only 4.5 percent of the museum’s almost $90 million budget.
Museums can, of course, make money from the public in other ways. At the Art Institute, only about one-fourth of visitors spend money in the retail shops or cafes and restaurants. But those who do, according to a museum spokesperson, spend about $58 per visit, not including admission fees.
At the Met, each visitor spends on average $25 per visit and at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, about $26.75, but both figures include admission fees.
The incentive to remove admission costs is certainly there. For one thing, it would help bring in the younger audiences museums crave. To this end, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York just announced that, from December and for at least the next three years, it will be free to everyone 25 and younger.
What would it take for museums that charge admission to make entry free for everyone? Again, it differs in each case. MFA Boston has estimated that it would take about $11 million annually for the museum to be completely free.
But even if that money could be raised, it would come at the cost of having fewer members. MFA Houston, too, worries about the adverse effect that eliminating admission fees would have on membership.
“Members,” according to an MFAH publicist, “are a vital element to the museum — not just as potential donors, but also as ambassadors who are keen to articulate the museum’s mission to others.”
One thing to keep in mind if you are paying full price when you visit an art museum is that even you are being subsidized. Although it’s difficult to calculate cost per visitor, the overheads at art museums include facilities, utilities and visitor engagement, as well as staff for education centers, libraries and security. All this quickly adds up. MFA Houston estimates that in 2024, each visitor cost the museum about $89. That’s about three times many adult general admission fees. The Met estimates that the real cost per visitor is $80, while the Dallas Museum of Art calculates that it’s somewhere between $60 and $80.
There’s no shame in making use of the various options outlined above to avoid paying admission fees. Art museums are public amenities. They should be easily accessible. The wealthy people who help fund them deserve thanks for their generosity, but they have generally been showered with blessings in life, including tax breaks, so there’s certainly no need to grovel.
If you do pay, what do you get for your money? A unique and unpredictable experience with some of the world’s greatest works of art in spacious, light-filled galleries in beautiful buildings. This experience is for the most part unconstrained by time limits; you’re free to move around as you please, and no one will tell you what to think or feel.
Free or not quite free, it’s not a bad deal.
