Free Museums in the U.S.
Getty Center
The Getty Center, located in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, is one of two locations of the J. Paul Getty Museum, famous for its architecture, gardens and views overlooking Los Angeles, and for the museum’s permanent collection of “pre-20th-century European paintings, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, and decorative arts; and 19th- and 20th-century American and European photographs”, including the famous painting of Vincent van Gogh, Irises.
The center opened its doors in 1997 and besides the museum, the other buildings house the Getty Foundation, the Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation Institute and the administrative offices of the J. Paul Getty Trust. This is a great place for strolling especially since the admission is free and the museum stays open until 9 on Saturday nights while the parking is free after 5 p.m.
The Smithsonian has the distinction of being the world’s largest museum complex with 13 free museums in Washington, DC, alone, being administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, concessions, licensing activities and profits from its retail operations and magazines. The Smithsonian Institution’s nine research centers, nineteen museums and zoo are located in cities such as New York, Panama, Virginia, etc., but most of its facilities are located in Washington, D.C.; many of the museums are located around the National Mall including the Air and Space Museum, the Natural History Museum, the American History Museum and the National Museum of the American Indian. The Institution’s collection has over 136 million items and publishes two magazines named Smithsonian (monthly) and Air & Space (bimonthly).
Walters Art Museum
The Walters Art Museum, formerly known as the Walters Art Gallery, is located in Baltimore, Maryland’s Mount Vernon neighborhood and since 2006, as a result of grants given by Baltimore City and Baltimore County, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Walters Art Museum began having free admission year-round. The Walters Art Museum was founded in 1934 and a large part of its current collection was amassed substantially by two men, William Thompson Walters (1819-1894) and Henry Walters (1848–1931); currently the collection includes masterworks of ancient Egypt, illuminated manuscripts, Renaissance bronzes, Greek sculpture and Roman sarcophagi, medieval ivories, Chinese ceramics and bronzes, Old Master and 19th-century paintings and Art Deco jewelry.
Museum of Contemporary Photography
The Museum of Contemporary Photography is a free museum located on the campus of Columbia College Chicago and in fact it was founded by this college in 1984 and is well-known for an active program and curating which discovers many emerging and mid-career artists. The museum’s collection features works by Julia Margaret Cameron, Walker Evans, Irving Penn, Aaron Siskind, Ansel Adams, Harry Callahan, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange and Victor Skrebneski; gelatin-silver prints, color work, digital pieces, photograms, 7,000-plus photographs and photographically related objects, including various alternative processes; the museum also houses the Midwest Photographers Project (MPP), which contains portfolios of photographers who reside in the Midwestern United States, with a strong focus on offering students, educators and researchers a space to explore contemporary photography.
National Museum of Mexican Art
The National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago is the country’s largest Latino cultural, featuring Mexican, Latino and Chicano art and culture, with over 6,000 pieces in the permanent exhibits depicting life on both sides of the border with folk art including Day of the Dead masks, woven and embroidered indigenous clothing, drawings and paintings, photographs and prints. The museum is the only Latino museum accredited by the American Association of Museums and was founded by Carlos Tortolero in 1982 in the neighborhood of Pilsen in Chicago, under the name of the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, and the current building in Harrison Park opened on March 27, 1987.
Alamo
Alamo, originally known as Mission San Antonio de Valero, is a San Antonio icon and a former Roman Catholic mission and fortress compound. This is the site of the Battle of the Alamo in 1836 and it originally comprised a sanctuary and surrounding buildings, being built by the Spanish Empire in the 18th century for the education of local Native Americans after their conversion to Christianity. The Alamo became a fortress housing the Mexican Army group the Second Flying Company of San Carlos de Parras, who gave the name of this location and today it houses a museum, or more exactly, a Shrine, Long Barrack Museum and Gift Museum that feature exhibits on the history of Texas and this spot’s role in the Texas Revolution.
Cleveland Museum of Art
The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum situated in Wade Park, in the University Circle neighborhood on Cleveland’s east side, Ohio, being founded “for the benefit of all people forever” in 1913. This site is internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian art, for its rooms devoted to contemporary art, American and European painters, ancient works and medieval treasures and African art, with more than 43,000 works of art from around the world. Each June, the museum organizes the annual Parade the Circle that includes one of the museum’s free community art ventures, with giant puppets and artistic floats that promenade around University Circle, but also spectacular costume performances and skilled stilt walkers.
Frye Art Museum
The Frye Art Museum is an art museum located in the First Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, USA, and carries on the legacy of its founders by bringing free art to the larger Seattle community since 1952. The Frye Museum opened to the public in 1952 and houses the private collection of Charles (1858–1940) and Emma (d. 1934) Frye, with paintings and sculptures dating from the nineteenth century to the present day. The museum building was originally designed by Paul Thiry and the visitors can participate in Art Talks with curators and educators, either by paying $5 for Tuesday’s Tea and Tour event which includes a guided stroll through the galleries followed by some discussion over tea and snacks or by choosing an one hour interactive Guided Tours and the Magic Lantern series with screenings and talks on the art of film.
Baltimore Museum of Art
The Baltimore Museum of Art is located between the Charles Village and Remington neighborhoods, immediately adjacent to the Homewood campus of Johns Hopkins University, and was founded in 1914. The museum houses more than 90,000 works of art in the collection, the highlights being the works by Matisse, the largest collection in the world, as well as masterpieces from beloved artists including Picasso, Cézanne, Picasso, Manet, Degas, Gauguin, van Gogh, Renoir and Warhol; since 2006 the Baltimore Museum of Art has had free admission year-round and all the current art collection was brought together by Baltimore sisters Claribel and Etta Cone.
Museum at Fashion Institute of Technology
Founded in 1944, the Fashion Institute of Technology is a selective college of art and design, business, and technology, of the State University of New York, where the fashionistas can study the culture of fashion and maybe even pick up some tips from our fashionable predecessors at the free museum at FIT, Manhattan’s Fashion Institute of Technology, which is an accredited institutional member of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, the Foundation for Interior Design Education Research and the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. The three current galleries feature visiting exhibitions and a rotating selection of the museum’s permanent collection, especially the Fashion and Textile History Gallery, where once every six months changes are made to offer a retrospective on the history of fashion but also tours focusing on fashion and style; the museum includes important collections of clothing, textiles and accessories and in 1985, FIT’s fashion library became the beneficiary of the records (design patterns and documentation) of Sri Swami Mayatitananda’s year-long pioneering work in American fashion, under the famous “Maya” label.
