When it comes to museums, Minnesota has bragging rights. Minnesota claims more than 600 museums, which is one museum for every 9,000 residents and twice the national average. You can see a museum in every county and 55 in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area.

May happens to be Minnesota Museum Month and a good time to check out museums in your local area.

"This is a new initiative the museums in the state of Minnesota and we hope it becomes an annual thing," said Sally Lederer, community relations manager for Metropolitan Library Service Agency (Melsa) Metro Public Libraries.

Register to win museum admissions

As part of a special promotion, you can register to win a year-long museum membership through Melsa at www.melsa.org/museumadventurepass. Two memberships will be given away daily through the month of May.

Use the Museum Adventure Pass, available at metro libraries
Seventeen metro museums participate in Melsa's Museum Adventure Pass program. To check out two free museum admissions, you must have a library card, pick out the museum passes available at a kiosk, and then check out the passes at desk. The librarian will hand you a receipt which serves as your admission to the museum. Only a certain number of passes are available for each museum. So if you plan on checking out a museum pass, have a backup museum in mind in case your first choice has already been taken.

After six years, the Museum Adventure Pass program is set to expire on Labor Day. The participating museums have donated hundreds of thousands of admissions during the life of the program, and Melsa will reevaluate the popular program.

"We hope to have some other sort of cool thing going on with our museum partners after that," said Lederer.

Shannon Slatton, reporting
sslatton@twelve.tv

Wednesday, May 16, 2012