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20 local museums will be free Saturday for Free Museum Day

 
Published Sept. 19, 2016

It will be even more tempting to step out of the heat and into some culture on Saturday, when 20 museums across the bay area are offering free admission.

They're participating in Smithsonian Day Live, a nationwide, annual event started by Smithsonian magazine more than 10 years ago to encourage museums to adopt the Smithsonian Institute's free admission policy for 24 hours. More recently, the city of St. Petersburg initiated its own Arts Alive Free Museum Day that coincides.

Museums affiliated with the Smithsonian offer free admission, but most require a free ticket. Play it safe by signing up and printing your tickets for two at smithsonianmag.com/museumday; many will also accept your ticket on the screen of your smartphone.

St. Petersburg's Arts Alive also brings special events and free admission, but some places have restrictions. For example, the Dalí Museum offers free admission for Pinellas County residents only; everyone else gets a free voucher to come back in October. The St. Petersburg Museum of History only lets Florida residents in for free.

The Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American Museum will have a special event that day, "Lift Every Voice St. Pete," to celebrate the opening of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. It will have a viewing of the grand opening, song, dance and spoken word, and joins African American museums across the nation in the celebration.

Some exhibitions on display at participating museums include the "Shana Moulton: Journeys Out of the Body" multimedia exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg. Or Tampa Museum of Art's "Norma Kamali: New City — Fashion+Art+Culture," which closes on Sunday.

Here are participating museums with free admission.

Smithsonian Day Live

• Florida Craft Art, 501 Central Ave., St. Petersburg. (Always free, but also has a 10 percent discount on all gallery purchases, no minimum.)

• Florida Holocaust Museum, 55 Fifth St. S, St. Petersburg.

• Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, 255 Beach Drive NE.

• Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art, 600 Klosterman Road, Tarpon Springs.

• Cracker Country, 4800 U.S. 301, Tampa.

• Henry B. Plant Museum, 401 W Kennedy Blvd., Tampa.

• Tampa Bay History Center, 801 Old Water St., Tampa.

• Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, 200 N Tampa St., Tampa.

• Armed Forces History Museum, 2050 34th Way N, Largo.

• Tampa Museum of Art, 120 W Gasparilla Plaza.

• Dr. Carter G. Woodson Museum, 2240 Ninth Ave. S, St. Petersburg.

• Morean Arts Center and Glass Studio, 719 Central Ave., St. Petersburg. (Also part of Arts Alive.)

• Creative Clay Cultural Arts Center, 1114 Central Ave., St. Petersburg. (Also part of Arts Alive.)

• Polk Museum of Art, 800 E Palmetto St., Lakeland.

• Ringling Museum of Art, 5401 Bay Shore Road, Sarasota.

• South Florida Museum, 201 10th St. W, Bradenton.

St. Petersburg Arts Alive Free Museum Day

• Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American Museum, 2240 Ninth Ave. S.

• Morean Art Center for Clay, 420 22nd St. S.

• St. Petersburg Museum of History, 335 Second Ave. NE. Free for Florida residents only.

• Dalí Museum, 1 Dalí Blvd. Free for Pinellas County residents only.