Bank of America has a great program called “Museums on Us”. As long as you hold a Bank of America card, you can get into various museums for free during the first full weekend of the year. Who doesn’t love free? Since some of these museums can be rather expensive, this perk can save you a ton of money. There are over 225 museums across the United States that participate in the program. It’s really easy to set this up so we’ll walk you through the process so you can start getting into these museums for free.
How to get a Bank of America card
The first thing you need to do is to get a Bank of America, Merrill Lynch or Bank of America (US Trust) credit card or debit card. I do not suggest applying for a Bank of America credit card just to get into these museums. It’s not worth taking up a 5/24 slot (see this article). Of course, if you don’t think you’ll ever be interested in travel hacking, then I suppose it doesn’t matter. So in that case, we suggest that you apply for a no annual fee credit card. You can find a list of them here. There are numerous credit cards to choose from but you may want to consider the Customized Cash Rewards card. It’s a good introduction to earning points and cash back.
A better alternative is to just apply for a Bank of America checking account. There are no fees if you maintain a $1,500 minimum balance (in addition to other ways to avoid a monthly fee). You definitely want to avoid any fees as that would make getting into a free museum pointless. When you open your checking account you’ll get a debit card for free. So the issue here is that this is free but you’ll need to keep some money in this account. So if you don’t want to lock up your money in this account, then a credit card with no annual fee is the best way to go.
Regardless of what option you go with, you only need one. Please note that each adult needs their own card. You get one admission per card. You cannot bring in other people with you even if they are your spouse, partner, adult child, etc. This is an easy fix though. All you have to do is make the other person in your household an authorized user on your account and get them a separate card. So if you are going to a museum for a Museums on Us weekend with four adults, all four adults need to have their own card in their name. Note I said adults. This is important for families since young children cannot have credit cards so they cannot participate in this program. If a family is going to a museum during one of these weekends, the parents will get in for free but they will have to pay for their children to get in.
The card needs to be expired but does it need to be active?
This is almost certainly a hack. The card needs to have three requirements – 1) issued by Bank of America, 2) have your name on it and 3) not expired. We have been to a bunch of museums and at no point has anyone checked to make sure our cards were active. Short of them attempting to run the card, I don’t see how they would. When we say this is almost certainly a hack, we haven’t been to every single museum so we cannot say 100% that there isn’t some type of place that has an ability to make sure a card is active. So assuming there isn’t a museum that can do that, then the hack is quite simple – open up a Bank of America bank account, get the debit cards you need and then close the account. This way you’re not tying up the money.
Now are we suggesting you do this? No. We’re just pointing out that this is possible. It’s up to you to determine if this makes sense for your situation. Since there doesn’t seem any ability for a museum to confirm that your card is active, you should be able to get in up until the expiration date on the cards. Of course, once it expires, you’ll have to go through all of this again.
When are these museums free?
For the vast majority of these museums, they are free on the first full weekend of the month, i.e. Saturday and Sunday. If you aren’t exactly sure when, you can check on the next dates on Bank of America’s website which is here. However, there are a handful of museums and attractions that are only on Saturday or Sunday so be sure to check on that before you head out.
Which museums are free?
There are over 225 museums and other attractions in 33 states and 98 cities. Some of my favorites include the Henry Ford, the Denver Botanic Gardens, the Florida Aquarium, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, Split Rock Lighthouse, Liberty Science Center, and the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. There are so many more. Be sure to check out the full list here.
How to use the card
What’s nice is that there’s nothing to activate and no other steps you really have to do. You generally just show up and show them your card and your ID. They’ll then just let you right in. However, we suggest that you confirm that none of these museums require any type of advanced reservation. We’ve never run into a situation where we had to do this but you don’t want to show up just to find out that you needed a reserved time even though it is free. This was a bigger issue in 2020 and 2021 but you never know when a museum is going to institute some type of timed reservation policy.
Our advice
If you have flexibility, plan your trips for the first weekend of the month when you can. It is easy to forget about this awesome perk so be sure to set some type of reminder for you to check. I’m sure we’ve been somewhere when we could have used this and we didn’t. Also be sure to set aside the day to try to go to multiple museums in one day. For example, the Orlando area has several and you can do them all in the same day or at least, the same weekend. It’s a great break from the theme parks.
We also suggest showing up early especially to the real popular places. Weekends at most of these places are busy and when you add in the people that are going with a Bank of America card, you can expect crowds to be even bigger.
For example, we went to the Florida Aquarium soon after it opened. It was pretty busy but we got in right away. When we left about an hour and half later, the line to get in was well over a hundred people deep. There was also nowhere to park as people were ready to fight each other for our spot when we were leaving. Getting there at opening could help avoid that. Of course, some places are not that popular even on these free days so perhaps you’ll want to go to those places after you visit the busier one first.
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