NYC Free: Museum Admission Every Thursday

Enjoy NYC on the cheap by taking advantage of FREE or pay-as-you-wish admission at museums, zoos, gardens and cultural institutions. We are lucky there are dozens of deals on different days and hours during the week and on weekends.

Here’s the list for Thursday.

Be sure to make your ticket reservation in advance, where required, since museums are still requiring social distancing – along with mask wearing.

Also visit our list of

Best Museums for Kids

See Also

Free Museum Admission Monday

Free Museum Admission Tuesday

Free Museum Admission Wednesday

You can also use it as a library card at all three NYC systems, NYPL (which serves Manhattan, Bronx and Staten Island), Brooklyn Library and Queens Library.

Sorry visitors – this is for NYC residents only.

Thursday – NYC Free Museum Admission

The only actual FREE admission on Thursday is Wave HIll.  Everything else is pay-as-you-wish, which means you can choose to pay nothing.  But that’s really cheap.

Photo: Wave HIll

Wave Hill

Wave Hill, the beautiful 28-acre public garden and cultural center in Riverdale with sweeping views of the Hudson River and the Palisades.

It was formerly the estate of millionaire George Perkins, a business partner of J.P. Morgan, and notables including Mark Twain and Theodore Roosevelt once lived here, too, on houses on the estate.

The gardens are gorgeous, and change with the scenery.  The gardens also have heat-stopping, picture postcard views across the Hudson River to New Jersey.

Wave Hill also has regular family-friendly events during the year, including a Honeybee Weekend, regular guided walks with horticulturists, and arts and crafts classes.

It’s one of NYC’s gems.

FREE admission all day on Thursday.

• Wave Hill is 675 West 252nd St., Riverdale, Bronx
• There are FREE shuttles to Wave Hill from the 242nd St. stop of the 1 subway, and from the Riverdale stop of MetroNorth

Frick Madison Fragonard’s Progress of Love

Frick Madison

Get a ticket to visit Goya and Gainsborough, Rembrandt and Vermeer, Whistler and Turner, Monet and more in the famous Breuer-designed landmark building on the Upper East Side.  The striking modern building was formerly the Met Breuer, and before that the Whitney Museum of American Art. 

The artwork has moved here while the historic mansion undergoes a two-year renovation, including modern electrical wiring and security, and opening the Frick’s upstairs family quarters for the first time.

There’s space enough for some works to be displayed for the first time. and for the museum’s signature The Progress of Love by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, to be shown together in its entirety for the first time in the Frick’s history.

And there’s room enough to showcase such rarely displayed works as seventeenth-century Mughal carpets and long-stored canvases.

• Pay-as-you-wish admission Thursdays 4pm to 6pm.
• Advance tickets required.
• Doors close at 5:30 p.m. Galleries begin to close at 5:45 p.m.
• Children under 10 are not admitted.
• Frick Madison is at 945 Madison Ave., between 74th and 75th Streets.

Brooklyn Children’s Museum