Museum alliance offers Free Saturday on Jan 23

Posted by Rich Schwartzman on January 21, 2010

The Brandywine Museums and Gardens Alliance is offering it’s second Free Saturday for people to visit eight of the Brandywine Valley’s featured tourist attractions.

Taking part in the Jan. 23 event are Brandywine River Museum, Delaware Art Museum, Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Delaware Historical Society, Delaware Museum of Natural History, Hagley Museum and Library, Rockwood Museum and Winterthur Museum & Country Estate.

The event was held last January also, and according to Lora Englehart of the Brandywine River Museum people can spend the entire day visiting each of the attractions. She added that several hundred people were lined up waiting for the gates to open last year, and that the museum is looking forward to this year’s event.

“We’re excited that we’re able to do this again, that the alliance is able to do this again. We had a wonderful experience last year. People really appreciated it. They appreciated the opportunity to visit a place briefly to see if they would like it and many people said that they would be back.”

All people have to do is show up. Entrance to the attractions is free, but the gift shops still charge, she said.

Meg Marcozzi from the Hagley Museum is also the chairman of the alliance She said the idea for the Free Saturday was a group decision made in 2008 because the economy was so bad.

“People were suffering and we wondered what we could do to reach out to the community. That was the impetus of the free day, what we could do to support the community,” she said.

The alliance also has a passport program coming up for the summer months. People can purchase a one-time admission of $35 dollars and visit each of the member museums once for that single admission, from Memorial Day through Labor Day.

Those passports can be purchased at any of the member museums, Marcozzi said.

About Rich Schwartzman

Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.