MoMA PS1 to Make Admission Free to All for Three Years
55Dec. 9, 2025
MoMA PS1, in Long Island City, New York, will offer free admission to all visitors from the beginning of 2026 through the end of 2028. The new pricing policy, which coincides with the institution’s fiftieth birthday, is made possible by a $900,000 gift from creative strategist and art collector Sonya Yu.
The museum since 2015 has been free to New Yorkers; other visitors have been asked to pay a suggested admissions fee. By making entry free for all, the institution aims to boost attendance, which the New York Times reports has returned to pre-pandemic levels of about 150,000 a year. The museum expects to welcome 180,000 visitors annually by the end of 2026 and 500,000 in five years.
“We know that contemporary art on its own is not going to necessarily always bring in the numbers, but over time, this will welcome people,” MoMA PS1 director Connie Butler told Artnews. “We want people to bring their strollers on the weekend and come into the museum without any barriers. We want to them to come into the courtyard, begin to experience our programs, and then make their way into the building and experience the art.”
“In today’s landscape, people have to constantly do math like, ‘Am I paying for my Netflix account, or am I paying for eggs?’” Yu told the Times, noting that free admission was intended specifically to encourage casual visitorship by people with limited time to engage with art and culture.
MoMA PS1 has a number of initiatives planned this year that it hopes will help lure audiences. Among these is Greater New York, its quinquennial survey of New York–based artists; a summer gala; and expanded programming for its popular Warm Up summer music series.