American Museum of Natural History: $37 for Out-of-State Adults and a $465 Million Gilder Center

New York's two great museums face each other across Central Park, and they price visitors the same way. Pay a lot if you're from out of state. Pay what you like if you live in New York.

At the American Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side, general admission for adults from outside New York State is $37. Seniors and students pay $30, children aged 3 to 12 pay $22. New York State residents pay $25, $20 and $14, and they can choose to pay what they wish for general admission instead. That option is for New York State residents only. New Jersey and Connecticut aren't included, unlike at the Met's student scheme. Special shows like the butterfly vivarium cost extra.

The view down into the Gilder Center's main atrium. Curving pale walls that look carved by water, oval openings and skylights, a staircase on the far side, a pool of daylight on the floor and visitors crossing it. It feels more like a canyon than a lobby. That was the idea.

The new wing

The Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation opened on May 4 2023. Studio Gang, Jeanne Gang's Chicago practice, designed it, and it cost $465 million. It adds about 230,000 square feet, including the Griffin Exploration Atrium in the picture, an insectarium and a butterfly vivarium. It also fixed an old problem. The museum had grown into a maze of some 20 connected buildings, and the new wing links many of them, so you can walk through instead of doubling back.

The atrium is inside the paid admission, but you can see the outside for free from Theodore Roosevelt Park on Columbus Avenue, where the wing's facade of pink granite rolls along the street.

Planning the day

The museum is big enough for a full day. Most people do the dinosaur halls on the fourth floor, the blue whale in the Hall of Ocean Life and the Gilder Center, then run out of energy. Go early on a weekday and start at the top. School groups fill the lower halls by mid-morning.

Stack the museums wisely. If you're paying the out-of-state price at both this and the Met, that's $67 per adult before lunch. Do one a day, take your time, and walk across the park between them. That part's free, and in October it's the best thing in the city.