Summer Museum Bargains

By Justin Sondak in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 5, 2006 1:54PM

This week, three Chicago museums who have taken flack for their high ticket prices and inaccessibility to regular working folks are expanding their free days. Just when you thought you should get outside more, museum officials are urging you to get back in the shark tank, descend into a submarine, or see some impressionist masterpieces.

General admission to the Shedd Aquarium is free through Friday. Visiting the marine mammals and sharks in The Oceanarium and Wild Reef will still cost extra, but this is your last chance to get something for nothing until this fall, when the museum will welcome all you cheapskates every Monday and Tuesday.

The Museum of Science and Industry is also free through June 9. Walk through a simulated airplane cabin or enormous internal organs gratis. Shell out to see DaVinci’s cutting edge inventions, the German sub and, starting Friday, the polka-dotted frogs.

Free Tuesdays at the Art Institute are dead. Taking its place is a stylish series of Free Thursday and Friday evenings where visitors can enjoy music, cocktails, tours, hors d’oeurves, and people watching, just like at the younger sibling institution up the lakefront. Through Labor Day, the Art Institute will stay open until 9pm on both days. And from now on, children under 12 (and others who look really, really young and don’t mind perpetuating a little white lie) get in for free. But if you’re older and visit any other day, you’ll have to shell out $12. Start saving up.

Shedd Aquarium, 1200 S. Lake Shore Drive
Museum of Science and Industry, 57th Street and Lake Shore Drive
Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Avenue

Shedd Image via Wikipedia