SoCal Museums announced their thirteenth Annual Museums Free-for-All on Jan. 28. Dozens of museums—presenting art, cultural heritage, natural history, and science— opened their doors and invited visitors to attend their museums free of charge.

Museums Free-for-All partnered with Metro, in an effort to encourage visitors living outside of Los Angeles to “Go Metro” and explore participating museums, many of which are a short walk from Metro bus or rail stops.

Avid Metro rider, Jaqueline Santos, 11, plans on taking advantage of Museum Free-For-All Day to visit her favorite museum the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). She plans on taking the Metro as she finds it relaxing and stress free.

“My parents hate driving me to places that are far away so I like to take the Metro whenever I want to go to L.A. because it’s just really easy and can be pretty relaxing,” Santos said. “It’s cool that SoCal Museums partnered with Metro because I know a lot of people who take the Metro whenever they go to museums in L.A., including myself.”  

As in past years, the special offer of free admission was good only for general admission, and ticketed exhibition prices remained in place that day, according to SoCal Museums. Some museums had timed tickets that needed to be reserved in advance in order to visit the museum that day.

One museum that required visitors to reserve a timed ticket was the Petersen Automotive Museum, which Emily Hernandez, 9, plans on attending with her family.

“My dad really likes cars so when he heard that it was participating in the free museum day, he reserved tickets for the whole family to go,” Hernandez said. “I don’t know why you have to reserve a ticket, but I’m still excited to go.”

On the SoCal Museum’s website it states that the group hopes to raise awareness of free visitor days available year-round across Southern California.

Upon learning that there are free days available year-round Camille Fernandez, 10, says she is surprised and definitely wants to look into it.

“I had no idea there were other days,” Fernandez said, “that’s something that they should promote even more because I thought it was just that one day.”

For more information on how to plan a trip to Los Angeles using the Metro, students can visit metro.net. There is also a list of the museums that participated in the Free-for-All Day along with other information on http://www.socalmuseums.org/.