My family didn’t pay anything to see the Karl Lagerfeld exhibit (it’s there until July 16) or the recently opened Van Gogh exhibit (on display until late August) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art when we visited a few weeks ago. We have a Patron Membership at our Seattle Art Museum and they have a reciprocal admission agreement with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York so we just show our memberships when we visit at their membership counter and they give us tickets to the museum. Our kids are under 18 so they are already free. But tickets for adults are $30 each so the Seattle Art Museum saved us $60 on this trip.
Things we loved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
We aren’t art afficianados who can spend a day at an art museum, but we appreciate seeing all different types of art, we love wandering buildings and we are interested in looking for pieces we recognize from other museums or from our learnings at school and movies. We find it fun to even just to walk around an art museum for a few minutes if we have the time. (This is one reason why I have a membership in Seattle-I love going even just for 10 minutes between errands at the market and downtown-it doesn’t have to be the full day to be “worth it”).
My aunt gave me a book when I was little called from the Mixed up files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler about kids who ran away and lived in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When we were doing quarantine in my parent’s basement I found this book on a shelf and read it to my kids nightly before we went to sleep and decided when we went to New York City together one day we’d visit the museum. (We were stuck together in quarantine in Canada for 14 days!)
Where did we eat nearby the Metropolitan Museum of Art?
Last time we visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art we biked up to Zabars for bagels and also ate nearby at Daily Provisions. This time we were really craving tacos and ate at Tacombi. Tacombi was also really casual and because the kids were way hungrier than us we could just order a taco without having to get a giant entree while they could eat a bigger portion which is a nice thing when you travel a lot and can’t eat all the things all the time.
And we went to the Whitney Museum with our Seattle Art Museum Membership too
But the Metropolitan Museum of Art isn’t the only New York City Museum we were able to visit for free because of our Seattle Art Museum. The Whitney Museum of American Art is also a reciprocal museum and because this one is on the Highline it’s really easy to visit too. We loved walking the Highline and the same designer James Corner is also working on our new Seattle Waterfront.
An adult admission at the Whitney Museum is usually $25 and kids under 18 are free so we saved $50 with our Seattle Art Museum Patron Membership. If you go on Fridays between 7-10pm it is pay what you want. When I last checked you need to book a timed ticket in advance but members could enter without a timed ticket too. It is really cool to be able to support our home museum while also getting reciprocal benefits while we travel so we’ve really appreciated having this membership. We probably wouldn’t have seen as much as we did in New York or on so many of our other trips without our reciprocal museum memberships.
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(PS. Another local museum membership we love for Seattle is Woodland Park Zoo. They do have reciprocal benefits at other zoos as well-usually for 50 percent discount, like at the Nashville Zoo and in New York at the Staten Island Zoo and Buffalo Zoo but for some reason I always forget to check this one in advance.)
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)
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