I built a map of where our museum membership works

Written in October 2026. Program lists change every few months, so the numbers here will drift.

I built Museum Membership Map, a free site that shows where a museum, zoo or garden membership might get you in somewhere else. It's live now.

Why I wanted it

Many memberships come with reciprocal benefits. Your local science center card might get you into a science center three states away. Your art museum membership might include a network of a thousand other museums. It's one of the best deals in family life and most people don't know they have it.

The catch is finding out where your card works. Every program publishes its own list, usually as a PDF, and the rules are different for each one. For us, figuring out where our membership worked meant digging through those PDFs one at a time, and then still not being sure. The information was all public. It just lived in a stack of PDFs that didn't talk to each other.

I'm a mom who loves museums, and I wanted to see if I could put them all on one map.

What it does

You pick your membership (or the program logos printed on your card), type a place, and get a map and a list of what might be free or discounted. It covers 17 programs, including NARM, ROAM, the ASTC Travel Passport, the Association of Children's Museums, AZA zoos and aquariums, the AHS garden network and Time Travelers. It also includes two programs that aren't reciprocal but are worth knowing about: Museums for All, which gives reduced admission with an EBT card, and Bank of America's Museums on Us.

That comes to about 4,200 places across the US and Canada, with a page for each place, each program and around 360 cities. No sign-up and no accounts. The programs you pick are saved in your own browser and nothing about you is sent anywhere.

The rules that trip people up

Building this taught me more about reciprocal programs than I expected to know. A few things that catch people out:

Your membership level matters. Many museums only include reciprocal programs at higher levels. The logos on your card are the best clue.
Distance rules. Some programs don't apply near your home museum. ASTC, for example, excludes places within 90 miles.
Who's covered. Some programs cover only the names on the card, others a family or a set number of people.
What's included. Special exhibits, parking and planetarium shows are often extra.

And always bring your card and a photo ID. Museums aren't required to honor a membership you can't show.

Honest about what it isn't

Every listing shows which program list it came from and when that list was last checked, and the site says plainly that it's a starting point, not a guarantee. Programs change and every museum sets its own rules, so call before you go. I'll write separately about how the data comes together, because getting it right was most of the work.

It isn't affiliated with any museum or program. The ASTC data is shown with ASTC's permission, which I asked for before publishing.

Try it

If you have a membership card in a drawer somewhere, look up where it works before your next trip. And if something on the map is wrong, there's a feedback page. Corrections from people who actually visited are the most useful thing I can get.