Free Museum Day This Saturday

If there’s a museum you’ve been wanting to try out for the first time, Smithsonian Magazine’s Museum Day is the day to do it. Coming up on Saturday, September 25th, the event allows free entry to more than 1,300 museums and cultural venues across the U.S., including Puerto Rico.

The event was started six years ago with two things in mind–to help people celebrate culture and to help promote both small and large museums. The day keeps in tradition with Washington D.C.’s Smithsonian Institution museums, which have a long history of offering free access to the public. More than 300,000 people took part in last year’s event.

It’s easy to find a participating museum nearby with the museum finder. A few of the venues that have been added to the line-up this year are the California Academy of Sciences (San Francisco), the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and the Brooklyn Museum.

Five museums in particular are organizing larger festivities around the day, with free guided tours, trivia contests, and giveaways. They are the Autry National Center (Los Angeles), Tampa Museum of Art, the Adler Planetarium (Chicago), Tower Hill Botanic Garden (Boylston, MA), and the Dallas Museum of Art.

The thing is, you can’t just show up and enter. You’ll need to go to the event website and fill out a form, indicating which museum you’ll visit. The ticket will be emailed to you; print it out and bring it with you to the museum.

The ticket is valid for entry for two people into one museum; one ticket per household.

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