N.Y.C. Museum Will Offer Free Admission to Food Stamp Recipients

New York Times

18-07-2025

Good morning. It's Friday. Today we'll look at a new admission policy at the American Museum of Natural History. We'll also find out about the Justice Department's firing of a career prosecutor in Manhattan who is the daughter of James Comey, the former F.B.I. director and an adversary of President Trump.
Quietly, at a time when the federal government is cutting social safety net programs, a museum in New York City has begun offering free admission to food stamp recipients.
The American Museum of Natural History already has a pay-what-you-wish policy for New York residents. But the museum has now introduced a no-cost membership tier available to anyone from New York receiving benefits under what is officially called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The museum will also admit as many as four guests with the recipient, free.
The new membership, called 'Discoverer,' will also open the way to exhibitions that require separate tickets, like 'Encounters in the Milky Way' in the Hayden Planetarium Space Theater. For nonmembers who live in New York State, ticketed exhibitions cost $5 in addition to admission, which is listed as $25 for an adult who lives in New York and $14 for a child who does. The museum charges out-of-state visitors more.
Molly Wasow Park, the commissioner of the city's Department of Social Services, said the museum was the first to make such an arrangement for SNAP recipients.
The museum will not deduct money from a recipient's benefits card, and is not receiving additional funding from the city, which allocates roughly $14.8 million a year to the museum through the Department of Cultural Affairs. SNAP benefits in the city are administered through the Human Resources Administration, a unit of the Department of Social Services.
The museum says it was already in talks with the two city agencies about the arrangement for SNAP recipients months before the Trump administration took office in January. Roughly 130,000 people in New York City could lose food stamp benefits under the Trump administration's sweeping new policy bill.
'There are half a million children in New York City who are receiving SNAP,' Park said, and they should 'have the same opportunity their peers will have.' She said the Discoverer tier would 'break down some of the barriers that exist between income groups in New York City.'
Also, she said, 'looking up at the whale is really terrific.'
Sean Decatur, the president of the museum, said the goal was to make the museum more accessible, and thus to interest more children in science even after they have visited on school field trips.
'We know that we have a base of families who have children who come to the museum but don't necessarily come back on their own outside of school,' he said. 'That's part of the core group we hope to reach' through the Discoverer program — 'students who had a good learning experience as part of a school trip. They can then come back with families and make the museum a regular place to visit.'
That could lead to something more than memories later in students' lives, he said, adding that he had been struck by how many scientists had told him that 'their path began with going to shows at the planetarium.'
'There's a spark that can get lit with young people,' he said, 'and we want to make sure that spark gets lit.'
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METROPOLITAN diary
The brick
Dear Diary:
In my Brooklyn youth, fireworks were an amazement. I hunted firecrackers on the ground, searching for ones that had not gone off among the confetti litter of those that had.
Kids said fireworks could be bought at Stacy Car Service, a long bike ride away. If I was caught with them, I knew that between the cops, my father and the nuns, I would be seriously dead. It happens.
I pooled my allowance and coins I had hustled running errands for my grandmother. I made that long bike ride, farther than I had ever gone before.
I waited in a dim stairwell next door to Stacy's. A man appeared.
'I want a brick,' I said. A brick: 80 packs of 16 firecrackers for a total of 1,280.
I handed over the money.
The man left and returned shortly with a rumpled grocery sack containing the contraband.
'Don't tell anyone,' he said.
On the long ride home, clutching the bag to my handlebars, I realized that this was the riskiest thing I had ever done.
Back at home, the brick was wrapped in red wax paper with a label that showed a black cat and Chinese script.
There was a single fuse if you wanted to light the entire brick at once, an unbelievable extravagance to ponder.
Somehow, I survived the wonders of my youth.
— Vincent P. Barkley
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here's today's Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Luke Caramanico and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [e-mail].
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