In late 2025, I started my wanderings around Connecticut as a new author for the Connecticut chapter of the upcoming Frommer’s guide book to New England.
I was determined to visit every museum in the previous edition of the book, plus more that weren't in it, so that I could see for myself which ones are worth visiting and which ones can be skipped.
I soon realized what a pricey proposition this was going to be. Admission costs add up quickly.
So I made a strategic decision. I became a member at an institution that had enthralled me. The New Britain Museum of American Art (NBMAA) not only has genuine masterpieces (like the breathtaking mural by Thomas Hart Benton below, and artworks from Georgia O’Keeffe, Max Weber, Romare Bearden, Grant Wood, Andy Warhol, Robert Indiana, Lee Krasner, and Sol LeWitt), but its special exhibits are world-class and it has a robust program of lectures, tours, and other events.
A “Circle Membership” at NBMAA included a membership to NARM (the North American Reciprocal Museum Association), which meant I’ll now be able to get in free, or at a significant discount, to some 1,500 museums across North America. That includes almost every museum in Connecticut that I planned to visit.
Membership at that level costs $125, and once I bought it, I got into the NBMAA at no extra cost (a savings of $22). I had made back the rest of my membership fee in the course of visits to 5 other institutions.
But I might have made my investment back in fewer visits had I been in an area of the country where museum entry fees are truly expensive. In New York City, the magnificent Frick Collection (pictured below) is a NARM member, and its usual admission is a whopping $30 per adult.
There’s no limit to how many museums you can visit in a year with a NARM membership, and there's no limit to how many times you can get into any single member institution. Members also get discounts at museum gift stores and for their ticketed events.
NARM gets you into cultural institutions across the United States (including Puerto Rico), plus Canada, Bermuda, and the Cayman Islands.
Other museum programs
I should note that NARM isn’t the only worthwhile museum pass out there, or even the only one that might be best for families, or for folks who prefer science to art. For those special interests, there’s the Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC) and the Association of Children’s Museums.
ASTC boasts more than 700 visitable institutions visitable in its Passport Program, ranging from planetariums to natural history facilities to children’s museums.
These include the U.S. Space & Rocket Center (pictured below) in Huntsville, Alabama; the Grand Rapids Children’s Museum; the Exploratorium in San Francisco; Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, New Jersey; The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia; The Perot Museum of Nature & Science in Houston; plus several Discovery Place and Kids Quest attractions.
ASTC membership also offers admission to some museums in Australia, Bermuda, Canada, the Czech Republic, Israel, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and South Korea.
The Association of Children’s Museums is an advocacy group, but one that also happens to offer a reciprocal network. Join that and you’ll get a 50% discount at roughly 200 kids museums nationwide.
The fine print
All three of the membership programs I named have some caveats it’s important to know about before joining.
First, you cannot join NARM directly. Instead you’ll have to join a museum that’s a member of NARM to get the reciprocal privileges. And sometimes the benefits are not fully reciprocal, meaning some museums offer a discount but not a free entry, or they may provide discounts to events but not for museum itself (that’s pretty rare, though).
Also important: With ASTC, there’s a limit on how much you can play tourist in your hometown. The majority of institutions do not extend visiting privileges to people who live within 90 miles.
So with ASTC, you’ll get to visit the museum you joined as many times as you like for free, but not any of its neighboring institutions.
NARM also has a few museums that institute a 15-mile radius exclusion for those who have joined a neighboring institution.
Other museum programs you may already have access to
If you have the right credit card or a library card, a museum freebie may be just around the corner. The same for members of the military, and folks who receive SNAP benefits. Here’s a quick look at those programs:
• Bank of America's Museums on Us: During the first full weekend of every month, Bank of America credit card holders get free admission to museums across the U.S.A., including to such heavy hitters as New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe, the Pérez Art Museum (pictured above) and the The Bass in Miami, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. To see the interactive map of museums it covers, click here.
• Library cards: Programs vary by area, but many libraries offer their members either carte blanche free entry to local museums or a limited number of free and/or discounted admissions each week. Some programs to look at include the Discover and Go program that many California libraries are part of, New York City’s Culture Pass Program, the family passes given out by Massachusetts Libraries, and library programs in Seattle, Fort Worth, and elsewhere.
• EBT Cards: The Museums for All program offers free and discounted museum visits to institutions across the United States. An interactive map is available at the link above.
• Military discounts: One of the largest programs, covering some 2,000 museums, zoos, and nature centers, is for active military and their families. Called the Blue Star Museums program, it offers free entry between Armed Forces Day (the third Saturday of May) and Labor Day each year.