You Can Now Go to the African American Museum Without Tickets on Weekdays

The wildly popular Smithsonian museum is about to become easier to visit

Photograph courtesy Smithsonian Institution.

Have you been waiting to visit the National Museum of African-American History and Culture as you watch the elusive timed-entry passes sell out online? Getting into the popular museum just became easier.

This month, the museum will start allowing visitors without passes on weekdays as part of its off-peak season. The museum’s new guidelines created the peak and off-peak times for 2019, expanding the hours visitors can walk in without the highly-coveted timed-entry passes.

Visitors can now walk in at any time during the museum’s hours on Mondays through Fridays from 10 AM to 5:30 PM. Entry didn’t begin until 1 PM in previous years and during the peak season in the summer.

A representative for the museum says that the museum hasn’t seen any increases in walk-in visitors this month yet, in comparison to past years. The representative credits the typical fall in visitation to the start of the off-peak season.

For those working during the week, weekend visitors still need to obtain a timed-entry pass on the museum’s website ahead of time. The off-peak season will end in February, and visitors will need either a timed-entry pass or a same-day pass starting in March.

The museum advertised the off-peak times in the last copy of the Washington Post‘s Express paper, which folded Thursday.

Editorial Fellow

Emily Martin is an editorial fellow for Washingtonian. She previously participated in the POLITICO Journalism Institute and covered Capitol Hill for The Durango Herald.