MUSEUMS & CULTURE

MoMA: Tickets, Free Friday, and Every Other Way In

Two things get repeated about MoMA more than anything else, and both of them are wrong.

The first is that admission is free on Friday evenings from 4 to 8 pm. The second is that it is free for everyone. Neither is true. MoMA’s own site says the free window is 5:30 to 8:30 pm, and it is for New York State residents only, with proof of residency and a ticket reserved in advance.

If you fly in, read a guide, and turn up at four o’clock on a Friday expecting to walk in free, you will be buying a $30 ticket.

This guide covers what a ticket actually costs, the fifteen or so ways to get in free that almost nobody lists, the one MoMA location that genuinely is free for everyone, and where the famous paintings actually hang.

What a ticket costs, and the part that pays for itself

Adult admission is $30, and the price is the same online and at the door. There is no online surcharge and no online discount, with one exception noted below.

Two rows there are worth a second look.

Visitors with disabilities pay $20 if they book online rather than $22 at the desk. It is the only category where the online price is lower, and MoMA does not advertise it anywhere except the discounts page. A care partner accompanying a visitor with a disability is free.

Students means students of any age, full-time with a valid ID, and MoMA explicitly includes international students. A lot of museums do not.

One more thing that matters: the ticket covers everything. All galleries and all special exhibitions, with no separate charges and no surcharges for the headline shows.

Free Friday: the two things every guide gets wrong

UNIQLO Friday Nights run from 5:30 to 8:30 pm, and free admission is for New York State residents only.

Here is what is circulating instead, from guides currently ranking for this exact question.

The 4-to-8 timing was correct once. It appears in MoMA’s own 2013 press material, alongside a $25 adult ticket. Both figures have moved since. The guides have not.

What is actually true. Every Friday the museum stays open late, until 8:30 pm, for everyone. From 5:30 pm, New York State residents get in free. Tickets must be reserved in advance, they are subject to availability, and proof of residency is required.

If you are not a New York State resident, you can still come on a Friday evening. You just pay.

Every other way in for free

There are more than a dozen, and they are scattered across a page most visitors never open. This is the full list from MoMA’s own discounts page.

Students and staff at New York colleges

Full-time students at these schools get one free admission per visit with a valid college ID.

• CUNY schools
• SUNY schools
• Columbia University
• New York University
• The New School
• Cooper Union
• Pratt Institute
• School of Visual Arts
• The Juilliard School
• The Rockefeller University

Employees of CUNY, Cooper Union, Pratt, Juilliard and NYU get the same with a work ID.

Students at NYU and Rockefeller get an extra benefit: free entry plus $5 guest tickets for up to five guests. Employees of the New School, NYU, Rockefeller and SVA get the same.

Food assistance: Museums for All

Anyone receiving SNAP or WIC benefits gets free admission for themselves and up to four guests, by showing an EBT or WIC card with photo ID.

That is a family of five into a $30-a-head museum for nothing, and it is the least publicised free route in the building.

Active US military

One free admission for the service member and up to five additional tickets for family members, with valid ID. Military families with dependent cards are also covered.

Museum staff and professional bodies

• Staff and volunteers of other museums, with a museum staff ID: free for themselves and one guest. This includes volunteers, interns and educators from museum-affiliated schools. Staff of sites and monuments do not qualify
• American Alliance of Museums members: two free admissions with a current card and photo ID
• ICOM members: two free admissions. MoMA states specifically that ICOMOS cards do not qualify

Teachers in New York State

Educators actively teaching Pre-K to 12th grade in New York State in visual arts, media arts, music, dance or theatre can apply for a free two-year membership. You need to be currently teaching in the state and have an active school-issued email address.

Other categories

• Cool Culture family pass: up to five people free, no advance reservation needed
• United Nations: New York-based permanent UN staff, one free admission. Spouse card holders, contract employees, freelancers and UN school students and faculty are excluded
• Employees of the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Metropolitan New York Library Council, the Arts & Business Council, the National Film Preservation Foundation, the National Historic Publications and Records Commission, and the New York Council for the Humanities

MoMA PS1 in Queens is free for everyone

This is a separate museum, in a different borough, and admission is free for all visitors. Adults, seniors, students, children: free. MoMA’s own page credits Sonya Yu for making it possible.

MoMA PS1 is at 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Queens, NY 11101. It shows contemporary art, and it is a genuinely different experience from the Midtown building rather than an overflow annexe.

If your reason for searching was the price, this is the answer nobody gives you. It costs nothing, every day, for anybody.

Hours, entrances, and the line

MoMA is open daily 10:30 am to 5:30 pm, and until 8:30 pm on Fridays. It closes only on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Which door. General admission uses the main entrance of the Rockefeller Building on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues. Coming out of the 5 Av–53 St subway station on the E or M, the entrance is on the opposite side of the street and down the block heading west.

Members use a separate entrance on 54th Street, between Fifth and Sixth.

For after-hours film screenings, enter at the Lauder Building entrance at 11 West 53rd Street closest to Fifth Avenue. For screenings in the Celeste Bartos theatre, enter at 4 West 54th Street.

On queues. MoMA’s own advice is that there may be a line to enter in the morning and on rainy days. Advance online purchase is required to guarantee entry; a limited number of tickets are sold on site.

Members’ mornings. On Saturday and Sunday from 9:30 to 10:30 am, select galleries open to members and their guests only, an hour before everyone else.

What to see, and where it actually is

MoMA’s collection galleries run across several floors and the works move, so the only reliable source for a specific painting is MoMA’s own website or the app on the day. That said, one location is stable enough to plan around.

The Starry Night is on Floor 5, in gallery 501, the Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Galleries. Van Gogh painted it in Saint-Rémy in June 1889, from the view outside his window at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum, where he spent twelve months in 1889 and 1890.

Floor 5 is where most visitors go first and where the crowds concentrate. If you want a few quiet minutes with it, be on that floor when the doors open at 10:30 rather than arriving at noon.

The rest of the building rewards going the other way. Most people work down from 5 and are tired by the time they reach the contemporary floors, which are usually the emptiest rooms in the museum.

The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden is included with any ticket and is the place to sit down halfway through.

How long you need

MoMA is smaller and far more navigable than the Met. That is the honest comparison, and it is the one people are usually looking for.

The Met covers five thousand years across every culture and needs a full day. MoMA covers modern and contemporary art in one building and is genuinely doable in an afternoon. Neither is a substitute for the other.

Bags, photography and the rules

• All bags are inspected on arrival. The museum can require you to check any bag or item
• Large umbrellas cannot come in but there is an umbrella rack. The museum takes no responsibility for what is left in it
• Coat check liability is capped at half the purchase price of an item, up to $150 maximum. Claim everything before closing
• No pets. Service animals are welcome, leashed and attended
• No smoking anywhere on museum property, including the outdoor Sculpture Garden, and that includes e-cigarettes
• Children 12 and under must be accompanied by an adult at all times
• Do not touch anything, including frames, platforms, labels and display cases. Interactive works are signposted
• Tickets cannot be resold, exchanged or transferred. Neither can membership benefits
• You may be filmed. The museum uses video monitoring and by visiting you grant permission for photographs and recordings you appear in to be used for museum purposes

Eating, parking, and the discounts that come with your ticket

Fourteen restaurants will discount your bill

Show your MoMA ticket at any of these and you get money off. This is on MoMA’s own discounts page and appears in essentially no guide.

Parking

Two garages offer MoMA rates. Both require you to validate your ticket in the museum lobby.

ICON Parking, 1330 Sixth Avenue, entrances at 94 W 54th Street and 57 W 53rd Street.

The 1345 Garage, 1345 Sixth Avenue, entrances at 126 W 55th Street and 101 W 54th Street: $22 for two hours, $26 for four, $32 for seven. No 24-hour rate.

Oversized vehicles pay an extra $10 at ICON, and between $10 and $45 at the 1345.

Questions people actually ask

Before you go

MoMA is one of the few major museums where the ticket genuinely covers everything, and one of the few where the free routes in are numerous, generous and almost completely unpublicised.

Check the list before you buy. If you are a student in New York, a museum worker, a serving member of the military, on SNAP or WIC, or a teacher in the state, you may not need a ticket at all. If you are none of those and you are going to be in the city a while, keep the ticket and put it toward a membership within the week.

And if the price is the whole problem, get on the 7 train. MoMA PS1 costs nothing. Across town, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History both work on completely different admission systems, and both are worth understanding before you buy anything.