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Which Museums Joined the IDNYC Program in 2017 and Which Left?

By Nicole Levy | January 10, 2017 1:55pm | Updated on January 11, 2017 2:46pm
 The Brooklyn Museum is one of the cultural institutions to exit the city's IDNYC program offering free memberships in 2017.
The Brooklyn Museum is one of the cultural institutions to exit the city's IDNYC program offering free memberships in 2017.
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Flickr/Howard Brier

Say goodbye, Brooklyn Museum, and hello, Film Forum!

Eleven museums and other cultural venues have bowed out of the city's municipal ID program, while 11 new institutions are now offering free one-year memberships to IDNYC cardholders.

The mayor's office released a list of 38 of "cultural benefit partners" for 2017 last week, when it announced the IDNYC program — which issues free municipal identification cards to New York residents aged 14 or older, regardless of their immigration status — would return for a third year.

Institutions partaking in the IDNYC program this year span all five boroughs, from the small Queens Theatre to the sprawling Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Staten Island Museum and the Snug Harbor Cultural Center also announced they were rejoining the program within the last week, bringing the total number of participating organizations to 40.

Missing from the ranks are such prominent past partners as the Brooklyn Museum and the Guggenheim. 

The city asks organizations joining its voluntary program for a one-year commitment and expects them to rotate in and out, according to a spokesman for the Department of Cultural Affairs.

“While we welcomed back every organization that wanted to remain a partner for 2017, we also want participation in the program to be flexible and responsive to partners’ needs,” spokesman Ryan Max said in a statement. "As they rotate in and out of the program, we will continue to work with new groups to make sure IDNYC members have access to a wide range of cultural activity."

The following 11 institutions are no longer offering free memberships to IDNYC cardholders:

► Brooklyn Botanic Garden
► Brooklyn Museum
► Guggenheim Museum
► El Museo del Barrio
► Museum of the Moving Image
► New Museum
► New York Hall of Science
► Queens Botanical Garden
► Staten Island Children's Museum
► Staten Island Historical Society
► Staten Island Zoo

These 11 institutions are new participants in the free membership program:

► Center for Performance Research
► China Institute
► The Drawing Center
► Film Forum
► Jacques Marchais Center for Tibetan Art
► The Museum at Eldridge Street
► The Museum of Arts and Design
► Park Avenue Armory
► St. George Theatre
► Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling
► Symphony Space

The city has issued more than 900,000 municipal identification cards since it officially launched the IDNYC program in 2015.

Cardholders can redeem free one-year memberships at any participating cultural institutions no matter what year they claimed their ID, as long as they have not been a member at that particular institution since Jan. 1, 2013.