With your Ossining library card you can borrow books, audio books, music and movies, sign on to library computers, access databases, take online classes and – as I recently discovered- learn a language! but one of the coolest things the library has been doing in the last few years is to be a part of the Museum Pass Program. This means that with your library card, you can check out passes for one of 15 museums it currently offers.
This is the list of museums for which the Ossining Public Library has passes (as of July 2019)
- American Museum of Natural History
- Boscobel
- Children’s Museum of Manhattan
- The Frick Collection
- Guggenheim Museum
- Hudson River Museum
- Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum
- Maritime Aquarium of Norwalk
- Museum of the City of New York
- Mystic Aquarium
- Neuberger Museum of Art
- New York Transit Museum
- Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture
- Storm King Art Center
- Westchester Children’s Museum
Some passes allow a whole family to go in for free and the savings are considerable.
With the Storm King Art Center’s pass for example, you get free admission for 2 adults and up to 4 children. Each regular priced adult admission is $18 and a child admission is $8, so a family of 6 gets in for free instead of paying $68 dollars.
The savings are even better at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. The Museum Pass get you free admission for up to 6 people, which means 6 adults can go for free instead of paying $33 dollars each: $198 dollars in savings!
Most passes admit 1 or more people for free, except for the Aquarium Passes which offer small discounts on General Admission.
Museum Pass Program Policies
- Museum passes can only be checked out by a patron with an Ossining library card.
- Museum passes must be returned to a Circulation staff member. They cannot be put in the book drop.
- 1 museum pass is allowed per family (except Frick Collection and the American Museum of Natural History).
- Passes are checked out for one week and cannot be renewed.
- Fines are $3.00 per day and cannot be read away.
- The replacement fee if lost is $75.00 (so don’t lose one!)
The collection of museum passes changes every year, and are offered thanks to the generosity of the “Friends of the Library.” I have used this program and plan to keep using it in the future.
For a better shot at getting the pass you want, my advice is to go to the library at the beginning of the week, which is when most passes are returned (after the weekend). You can also call and ask if the pass you want is available. If it is, you’ll have to run over to the library because they can’t be placed on hold!
Good luck getting the passes you want, and enjoy!