Moma hours

How it works

The Museum of Modern Art sits at 11 West 53 Street in Manhattan. The visit page lists Monday through Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday as 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and Friday as 10:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Exhibition and collection galleries close about fifteen minutes before the museum. Stores and restaurants keep different hours. Tickets are for a visit, not a license to ignore those lines.

A 10:30 a.m. open is a museum clock, not a dawn grocery. You can sleep a full night and still arrive at the first public hour. You cannot treat 9:45 a.m. as a casual start unless you are in a member morning, which is a separate window. Friday’s 8:30 p.m. close is the late night of the week. It is later than a school-night bedtime for many households and earlier than a bar. Walking galleries at 8:10 p.m. on a Friday is a choice to spend the last good hour of sleep under museum lights if you still owe Saturday an early train.

MoMA PS1 in Queens is a different building with a different board. Do not copy 10:30 a.m. onto PS1, and do not copy PS1’s closed weekdays onto 53rd Street. The hours on this page are the Manhattan museum unless you are holding a PS1 ticket.

After a night’s sleep, before a work-night close

Weekday 5:30 p.m. is an afternoon museum. It fits a morning visit after you have actually slept, or a lunch-to-late-afternoon loop. It does not fit a plan that starts at 4:50 p.m. and pretends the galleries will linger. Last admission is not printed as a slogan on the hours list, but the fifteen-minute gallery cutoff is: do not arrive at 5:20 p.m. and expect a full floor. Tickets and crowd flow still belong to that day’s system. Buy or reserve the way the museum currently asks; then match the visit to the sleep you have left.

Saturday and Sunday look like the weekday span on the public board, with one extra edge for members: select galleries open to members and their guests from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. That hour is not a public open. If you are not in that program, 10:30 a.m. is still your first door. Sleeping until 10:00 a.m. and hoping the lobby will wait is how a timed entry is missed.

Most days: 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Friday: 10:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Closed: Thanksgiving and Christmas. Galleries: about fifteen minutes before closing. Sleep: 10:30 a.m. is after a night; Friday late is the one evening that can steal the next one.

The paintings will still be there on Saturday morning. Friday night will not give back the sleep you spend in the last gallery.

Friday evenings and the two closed days

UNIQLO Friday Nights offer free admission for New York State residents from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., with tickets reserved in advance. That is a late window on purpose. It is also a crowd. If you need quiet and a full night before an early Saturday, a weekday morning after sleep is the kinder board. If Friday night is the only free hour you have, eat first, reserve the ticket, and leave before you are bargaining with tomorrow’s alarm in the last room.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are closed. Those are not short days. Other holidays follow the current listing; some years add extra morning or evening hours around the December close. Those extra hours are a seasonal notice. Do not set a holiday-week alarm in July. Film screenings and dining can run on clocks that are not the gallery clock. If the errand is a movie or a table, read that event, then go home while you can still sleep.