Can someone help me understand the North American Reciprocal Museum Memberships (NARM)?

I just learned about NARM within the past week and was looking into joining.

It seems that you can join at whatever price you find lowest from a museum of your choice. That goes to your question “should I choose the least expensive museum near me to save money?”

As for your husband, this is on the site: Membership benefits typically include two people per household, unless it is a “Family” membership and lasts for 12 months.

I was looking at a museum in CT that has the lowest price for NARM membership. When I first learned about NARM, last week, and was looking on their site to find the price of membership, I couldn’t understand why there was no price, and then I figured it out.

@jca2 I looked at several museums and read over the NARM website and still a little confused. The museum I was going to pick is right next to another museum I want to go to, so that won’t work, because of their 15 mile rule. I’m going to call a couple of museums today.

I believe it’s only if the museum has the asterisks next to it. As per the instructions on the site.

@jca2 I read that too, so do I need to join at a museum that includes my spouse? I don’t understand why they don’t just have a NARM membership that you buy through NARM? I wonder how it works financially. How the money gets moved around to the museums and back to NARM etc. I might call NARM to get their advice, maybe I will get someone who is talkative.

According to the site, it’s a “family” membership which would include your spouse or person who lives with you.

I don’t really care how the money gets moved back to NARM.

I think the membership getting purchased at a museum and not directly with NARM is more to save NARM on administrative costs.

Until I learned about NARM a week ago (exactly a week ago today), I never really looked at the membershp levels for museums. I have joined museums in the past, but always the annual basic level. Now that I know what NARM is, I will go for that.

@jca2 I don’t really care, just a curiosity. I won’t be asking about the money movement if I call, I will just be asking about their advice for where to join and about my husband. I want to call ahead, because if I am at a busy museum then it will be hard to ask questions with a line of people waiting behind me.

This is the one I am considering joining, because it’s cheaper than any others around, and we may go there in a few weeks to join and to visit. It’s only 125 for the NARM level.

I am visiting Maine in the summer and want to go to a museum up there, plus if I am a member of NARM, I will go to museums more often. In addition, you get the discount in the gift shop and cafes.

https://www.nbmaa.org/circle-level-membership

Thanks for the link. I also was thinking I would make a point to go to a lot of museums over the next 12 months if I join. If I get in free, I can just go for an hour, be in some air conditioning. If my husband can go it will work out financially, if only I can go for free then it might be better to pay each museum, not only because I will wind up paying more, but also because the museums I go to will get more money.

I’m going to try to decide this week, because I think I am going to try to go to the Chihuly glass museum next week and maybe the history museum in St. Pete also, or the Holocaust museum. When I lived in St. Pete I went to a lot of the museums, but missed a lot of them too, so I want to do a day trip and hit a bunch of them. It’s a really nice city for museums if you ever think about planning a trip.

I heard St. Pete has a lot of great museums.

Museums can be expensive sometimes. If you can get free admission, that’s great, plus cafe discount is great too. I go to a great art museum in Hartford with my daughter sometimes, and pre-Covid, we’d have a nice lunch in the cafe and she’d love to go to the gift shop and get some crap.

@jca2 I agree about the restaurants, some are very nice at some of the museums around the country.

Florida has a lot of great tourist sights and museums. When I was a kid people in the northeast made Florida sound like a backwater, but the history is very long and so many interesting people vacationed here in the winters and set up museums or their estates were turned into tourist centers.