Free Museum Nights in Boston This Winter: The Gardner, the ICA and MLK Day Open Houses

Thursday night at the Gardner

Free admission runs 5 to 9 p.m. every Thursday, all year. The courtyard is the reason to come. It is a Venetian palazzo under glass, with flowering plants and mossy old statuary below. On the balconies above, the galleries are hung floor to ceiling.

Tickets are released at 10 a.m. on the Tuesday two days before, and capacity is capped. Day-of tickets are not promised. If there are 10 or more of you, arrange the visit with the museum in advance. Book every person their own ticket as soon as the slots open.

The museum is open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursdays and closes on Tuesdays. Drop-in art-making is free around the building on a free evening, and the first Thursday of the month adds live music in the courtyard. Any other day, adults pay $25 and under-18s go free.

The ICA on Thursdays

The ICA is a glass-and-steel box pushed out over the water at 25 Harbor Shore Drive in the Seaport, with wooden grandstand steps dropping to the harbour's edge. Admission is free to everyone on Thursdays from 5 to 9 p.m., and you need an advance timed ticket. Tickets on the door are not promised.

It opens at 10 a.m. and closes at 5 p.m., staying open until 9 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays, and it is shut on Mondays. Through the winter you can see 90 YEARS and My ICA Story, both up until 7 March. Shows by Cynthia Daignault and Leilah Babirye come down on 18 January. Otherwise it's $20 for adults. Under-18s are free whenever they come, and the code PLAYDATE gets two free adult tickets with children aged 12 and under.

One warning. On the first Friday of the month the museum closes at 5 p.m. for a ticketed 21-and-over event, so keep that evening for something else.

Free on MLK Day

The ICA also opens free to everyone on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Presidents' Day, the two holiday open houses that fall in the winter. Harvard Art Museums are free every day but close on major holidays, so save those two dates for the Seaport.

Huntington Avenue on a Thursday

The Museum of Fine Arts sits behind a long columned granite front on Huntington Avenue, lit from below at night. It isn't free, but on the third Thursday of the month you pay what you wish, with a $5 minimum. The offer starts at 5 p.m. and the galleries stay open until 10 p.m., with last entry half an hour before that. Tickets are sold at the desk on the day, with no booking ahead. The next two third Thursdays are 19 November and 17 December. Any other day adults pay $30, ages 7 to 17 pay $14, and children need their own ticket. It's closed on Tuesdays, and First Fridays are a separate ticketed evening at full price.

A short walk along the same street, MassArt Art Museum at 621 Huntington Avenue is free all the time and open until 8 p.m. on Thursdays. Friday to Sunday it runs noon to 5 p.m., and it's closed Monday to Wednesday. There's one timed slot a day and it can sell out, so reserve ahead. Robert Lazzarini's show is up until 28 February, and the museum is shut on 26 November.

Cambridge and Medford galleries

Harvard's museums at 32 Quincy Street are free every day, a few minutes from Harvard Square. Harvard Art Museums at Night runs 5 to 9 p.m., usually on the last Thursday of the month. The next ones are 3 December, 28 January and 25 February. There's a DJ in the arcaded travertine courtyard under the glass pyramid roof, drinks and snacks from local vendors, and the galleries stay open. Standard hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday to Sunday, and a weekend visit goes smoother if you register first.

Tufts University Art Galleries in Medford stay open until 8 p.m. on Thursdays and charge nothing. Take the Green Line E from the Museum of Fine Arts stop out to Medford/Tufts at the end of the line, about 26 minutes from downtown. Other days it's 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday to Sunday. Arnold J. Kemp's show is up until 6 December. The Tufts space at 230 Fenway in Boston is closed, so don't go looking for that one.

First Fridays

SoWa First Fridays opens two converted brick warehouses at 450 and 460 Harrison Avenue in the South End, 5 to 9 p.m. on the first Friday of the month. There's no ticket and no door policy. Artists open their own studios, so you can talk to the person who made the work. Food and drink trucks park up at 500 Harrison Avenue, weather allowing.

If you're travelling with small children, the Discovery Museum is free from 4:30 to 8 p.m. on the first Friday night of the month, October through June. You can't book and don't need to. Inside are climbing structures and water tables, with a treehouse and a science park in the woods outside. Getting there means the Fitchburg Line from North Station to South Acton, 48 to 55 minutes and about one train an hour, then a short taxi. Without children, skip it.

Free on any evening

The Boston Public Library's central building at 700 Boylston Street in Copley Square costs nothing. It opens at 9 a.m. and closes at 8 p.m. from Monday to Thursday, 5 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, with Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Go up to Bates Hall, the barrel-vaulted reading room with long oak tables under green-shaded brass lamps. Free volunteer-led art and architecture tours run most days, first come, meeting in the vestibule at the Dartmouth Street entrance. They have been suspended before, so check on the day rather than building an evening around one.

The New England Holocaust Memorial is better after dark. Glass towers stand in a line on a narrow brick plaza, more than 50 feet high and lit from inside. They are etched with numbers for the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. It's in Carmen Park at 98 Union Street beside Faneuil Hall, open at all hours, with no gate and no ticket. Haymarket station is a couple of minutes' walk. Give it 15 quiet minutes.

Bad art in Dorchester

The Museum of Bad Art hangs inside Dorchester Brewing Co at 1250 Massachusetts Avenue and costs nothing to see. These are sincere paintings in which something has gone wrong in a way that still holds your eye, each one with a straight-faced label. They run up the stairwell and across the taproom walls, and one hangs on the outside of the walk-in fridge by the kitchen. Doors open at 11:30 a.m. daily and close at 10 p.m. midweek, 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and 9 p.m. on Sunday and Monday. Nobody under 21 is let in after 6 p.m. on Friday or Saturday.

Before you go

Thursday is the evening to protect, and the Gardner, the ICA and MassArt all want their tickets or slots booked before you set off. The Gardner and the MFA close on Tuesdays, Harvard and the ICA on Mondays.

See the Boston guide and the Boston hotel search.