{"id":521406,"date":"2026-01-16T22:54:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T22:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/521406\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T22:54:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T22:54:14","slug":"this-is-the-best-free-museum-in-l-a-according-to-time-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/521406\/","title":{"rendered":"This is the best free museum in L.A., according to Time Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anyone who doesn\u2019t think of Los Angeles as an arts capital of the world at this point just isn\u2019t paying attention. Not only do we have museums boasting Modernist masters and impressive Impressionists, but most of these world-class institutions offer a way to visit for free. Some offer free admission for L.A. County residents on weekday afternoons; some let visitors\u00a0come for free one day a month or one day a week. But many museums\u2014including objectively some of the very best in the city<\/a>\u2014are free all of the time.<\/p>\n

This week, we\u00a0refreshed and reorganized\u00a0our guide to L.A.\u2019s best free museums<\/a>\u00a0with\u00a0all of the most up-to-date details on when and how to check them out for free. And one museum\u00a0continues to gravitate to the top: The Broad<\/a>. Even though, compared to most of the entries on our list, the Broad is a relative newcomer\u2014it opened\u00a0the doors of its distinctive honeycomb-like building in 2015\u2014it quickly made a splash both among the art world and on social media (remember when a selfie in the Infinity Mirror Room was the biggest flex in town?). But to the Broad\u2019s credit, it has always backed up all the buzz with both style and substance.<\/p>\n

When determining our rankings of the best free museums, we balanced the level of free accessibility with the caliber of art and scope of\u00a0each museum\u2019s artistic and cultural programming. The Broad ticks all these boxes and then some. When philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad opened their namesake museum a decade ago, it was envisioned as a gift to Los Angeles that would make contemporary art accessible to all\u2014and the free admission\u00a0(even, on select nights, to otherwise paid exhibitions) has definitely helped make that goal a reality.<\/p>\n

\"The
\nPhotograph: Courtesy Unsplash\/Rahul Chakraborty <\/p>\n

From the start, the building\u2019s unique \u201cveil and vault\u201d design by Diller Scofidio + Renfro added visual interest from the outside\u00a0along Grand Avenue, and helped get people in the door to explore the collection of 2,000 post-war and contemporary works from the Broads\u2019 collection,\u00a0including pieces by artists like\u00a0Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mark Bradford, Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Takashi Murakami, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Cy Twombly and Andy Warhol. And of course we can\u2019t forget Yayoi Kusama\u2014the museum has two of the artist\u2019s immersive, mirror-laden rooms (one that you can step into, and one that you only pop your head into). And now you don\u2019t even have to wait in long standby lines to step into Infinity Mirrored Room\u2014The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away;\u00a0you can book a free time slot<\/a> as an add-on to your free museum ticket.<\/p>\n

Though the permanent collection is destination-worthy on its own,\u00a0you can usually find a\u00a0rotating special exhibition in the\u00a0Broad\u2019s first-floor galleries. The space has housed everything\u00a0from Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson\u2019s video piece The Visitors (which The Guardian named the best work of art of the 21st century) to a large-scale Kusama show. Last year, \u201cJeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me<\/a>\u201d was one of our picks<\/a> for the best exhibitions of the year. Arriving from the Venice Biennale, the show used foundational American documents to comment on Indigenous and queer oppression in a timely and surprisingly joyful way.<\/p>\n

\"\u201cRobert
\nPhotograph: Michael Juliano for Time Out\u201cRobert Therrien: This Is a Story\u201d at the Broad <\/p>\n

On view now through April 5 is \u201cRobert Therrien: This Is a Story<\/a>,\u201d which expands on the late L.A.-based artist\u2019s upstairs presence; his popular Under the Table was actually the very first artwork installed in the museum. And coming up this year, \u201cYoko Ono: Music of the Mind<\/a>\u201d\u2014the artist, musician and activist\u2019s first-ever solo museum show in Southern California\u2014is one of the exhibitions we\u2019re most excited about<\/a> in 2026. That\u2019ll open May 23 and run through October 11. Though these special exhibitions typically require a separate paid ticket (admission to the Robert Therrien retrospective is $19), there\u2019s even a way to see those buzzworthy shows sans the price of admission. On Thursday evenings, you can\u00a0check out the current show\u00a0for free from 5 to 8pm, with a public tour of the exhibition at 6pm (book a ticket here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"The
\nCourtesy of The Broad. \u00a9 Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R). Rendering by Plomp.Exterior rendering of the future Broad expansion from Hope Street. <\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, a large-scale museum expansion is in the works<\/a>, which will add three floors and 55,000 square feet of new gallery space above the parking lot, amounting to a whopping 70% increase of the museum\u2019s footprint. There will be room for expanded displays of well-known artists like Warhol, Basquiat and Koons, as well as artists new to the Broad collection,\u00a0like\u00a0Cauleen Smith, Lauren Halsey and Patrick Martinez,\u00a0as well as other\u00a0overlooked artists and movements. The expanded galleries will be complemented by top-floor courtyards and live programming spaces that will host performances and concerts. You\u2019ll also be able to actually stroll among the racks of paintings housed inside the museum vault, which normally can only be glimpsed from the elevator. And yes, the Broad\u00a0will still be free.\u00a0The expansion is scheduled to be completed\u00a0in 2028.<\/p>\n

\"The
\nPhotograph: Michael Juliano for Time OutThe Getty Center. <\/p>\n

As for the rest of our list: In the No. 2 spot is the iconic Getty Center<\/a>, which boasts a calendar of\u00a0classy, free programs throughout the year\u2014not to mention hilltop views that are as stunning as its collection of Impressionist paintings (including Van Gogh\u2019s Irises), drawings, illuminated manuscripts, photography and more. In the No. 3 spot is the Hammer Museum<\/a>, which regularly hosts exciting exhibitions of cutting-edge art, including the biennial \u201cMade in L.A.<\/a>\u201d exhibition that\u2019s become a cornerstone of the city\u2019s local arts scene. You can catch\u00a0this\u00a0most recent iteration through March 1. Rounding out the top five are MOCA Grand Avenue<\/a>, right across the street from the Broad, and the Getty Villa<\/a>, which reopened last summer<\/a> after surviving the Palisades Fire. Farther down on the list, you\u2019ll also find eminently worthy museums including LACMA<\/a>, the Natural History Museum<\/a> and the Autry Museum of the American West<\/a>\u2014those aren\u2019t free all the time, but we\u2019ve detailed when and how you can visit without paying.<\/p>\n

As Los Angeles prepares to take center stage in a big way\u2014starting this summer with the World Cup<\/a>, followed by the Super Bowl in 2027 and especially the 2028 Summer Olympics<\/a>\u2014this year many museums are unveiling renovations, expansions or completely new permanent exhibitions in time to welcome scores of new visitors. And then there are brand-new museums that we can\u2019t wait to check out: namely the long-awaited Lucas Museum of Narrative Art<\/a> and Dataland<\/a>, the world\u2019s first museum\u00a0of AI arts. It\u2019s still TBD whether either of these eagerly anticipated museums, which are sure to be a hot ticket, will offer ways to visit for free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anyone who doesn\u2019t think of Los Angeles as an arts capital of the world at this point just…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":521407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1037,1582,276,29645,2961,224,5337,29646],"class_list":{"0":"post-521406","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-categories-art","12":"tag-la","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-losangeles","15":"tag-news-art"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115907242621514659","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}