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Cincinnati Museum Center hosting special Free Friday June 3

Free admission to museums and more from 4 to 8 p.m.

CINCINNATI – Cincinnati Museum Center is hosting a special Free Friday on June 3. From 4 to 8 p.m., guests receive free admission to the Cincinnati History Museum, Museum of Natural History & Science and Duke Energy Children’s Museum.

Museum Center Free FridayFree Friday is an opportunity for individuals who might not be able to visit Cincinnati Museum Center during regular hours to experience the incredible museums and programming it has to offer. This year has even more to offer with two temporary exhibits also included. Treasures of Travel: Cincinnatians Collect the World and Our National Parks: Celebrating 100 Years of the National Park Service offer a deeper look at the Museum Center’s rich collections.

Treasures of Travel, the fifth installment of Cincinnati Museum Center’s Treasures series, features the items Cincinnatians have brought home with them from trips abroad. The items travelers bring home tell us as much about them as it does the cultures and places they visited. The exhibit features Raffia headdresses, feather skirts and girdles and ceremonial clubs from the South Pacific islands; decorated wooden masks, bronze figurines and ceremonial drums from Africa; shrunken heads and beautiful feather work from South America; carved stones and intricate masks from the Arctic; and decorative silver, jewelry and pottery from the American Southwest. Some traveled out of curiosity, some for pleasure, others out of a sense of duty, but each person brought home a piece of another culture that tells us more about the travelers themselves.

Our National Parks celebrates the 100th anniversary of the creation of the National Park Service and the wide open spaces and wildlife it has protected for the past century. From the deserts of Arizona to the swamps of Florida to the hot springs of Wyoming, Our National Parks uses objects, art and photographs to showcase the untamed beauty of the national parks and the animals that inhabit them. Animal specimens include a beaver, sidewinder rattlesnake, bald eagle and black bear. Geological artifacts like stalagmites, Sulphur and St. Louis limestone represent the rocks and minerals that have shaped and formed iconic features of the parks we love. The exhibit also features fossils like a diplodocus vertebra and fossilized footprints that litter the landscape of prehistoric North America.

We’ve also added a new permanent exhibit to the Duke Energy Children’s Museum. Developed in collaboration with the Junior League of Cincinnati, Inside the Grin lets you literally climb inside the mouth to explore and learn how to establish healthy dental habits at home. The exhibit features a full set of enormous, anatomically-correct teeth and lets you use giant floss and a massive toothbrush to practice proper flossing and brushing techniques and learn healthy habits through play. The inside of the mouth is modeled after a dentist’s office, complete with a reclining dentist’s chair, child-safe dental instruments and interactive videos. The exhibit presents oral healthcare in a positive, non-threatening manner that will ease children’s fears and misconceptions about visiting the dentist and caring for their smiles.

If three museums and two temporary exhibits haven’t worn you out yet, you can take a tour through one of history’s most brilliant minds in Da Vinci – The Genius . The interactive exhibit features over 70 life-size reproductions of da Vinci’s inventions, including concepts for some of modern society’s most impactful inventions, such as the helicopter, airplane, automobile, submarine and parachute. Each invention is crafted by Italian artisans using the same techniques and materials from the Renaissance period and is carefully guided by da Vinci’s detailed notebooks. Visitors can push, pull, crank and interact with many of these inventions for a hands-on understanding of the principles behind them.

You can also purchase a ticket for the OMNIMAX® Theater and visit America’s national parks in ways you’ve never experienced before. National Parks Adventure is another celebration of the National Park Service’s centennial, showcasing the untamed beauty of the national parks, where some of America’s most incredibly diverse landscapes remain much as they were millions of years ago. Experience a range of environments from the towering trees of Redwood National Park to the murky swamps of the Everglades to the crystal clear lakes of Glacier National Park, and view beautiful icons such as Half Dome, Delicate Arch, Devil’s Tower and Old Faithful – monuments to the nation’s vast wilderness.

Free Friday is June 3 from 4 to 8 p.m. Guests receive free admission to the Cincinnati History Museum, Museum of Natural History & Science and Duke Energy Children’s Museum, as well as Treasures of Travel: Cincinnatians Collect the World and Our National Parks: Celebrating 100 Years of the National Park Service . Guests must obtain their free tickets from the box office. Children age 12 and younger must be accompanied by an adult 18 years of age or older. Admission to the Robert D. Lindner Family OMNIMAX® Theater and the special exhibition Da Vinci – The Genius are not included with Free Friday admission. For more information, visit www.cincymuseum.org/events/free-fridays