Museums Open On Monday In Los Angeles: What Actually Opens

Monday is the one day of the week that reliably humbles a Los Angeles museum plan. Visitors arrive at the Getty Center gate, or line up outside The Broad on Grand Avenue, or climb to the Griffith Observatory, only to find the doors shut. It is not a glitch. Roughly half the museums in this city treat Monday as their weekly closure, and the pattern is consistent enough that it deserves its own plan rather than a workaround.

The good news is that the Monday-open list is stronger than most people expect. The Petersen Automotive Museum, the Natural History Museum, the California Science Center, LACMA and the GRAMMY Museum all operate on Mondays, and several of them are among the busiest museums in the city on any day of the week. The trick is knowing which doors are unlocked before you commit to a neighborhood.

This guide walks through the full Monday picture: what opens, what closes, what a Monday visit costs once parking is counted, and a workable itinerary that strings several open museums into one day. For a broader look at the whole scene, start with the best museums in Los Angeles and come back here for the Monday-specific detail.

Which Museums Are Open On Monday In Los Angeles?

About a dozen Los Angeles museums keep regular Monday hours, led by the Petersen Automotive Museum, the Natural History Museum, the California Science Center, LACMA, the GRAMMY Museum and the Museum of Tolerance. The Huntington and the Norton Simon Museum also open on Mondays, as do Madame Tussauds Hollywood, the Warner Bros. Studio Tour and the Aquarium of the Pacific. The Getty Center, The Broad and MOCA do not.

The Monday-open list splits neatly into three clusters, which matters if you are trying to minimize time in traffic. On the Miracle Mile, the Petersen Automotive Museum is open daily and LACMA opens every day except Wednesday, so both are available on a Monday. The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, directly across the street, is closed on Tuesdays but open Mondays, which makes that single block of Wilshire Boulevard one of the most productive Monday destinations in the city.

In Exposition Park, south of downtown, the Natural History Museum and the California Science Center both run Monday operations. The Natural History Museum closes only on the first Tuesday of each month, so a normal Monday is safe, but the first Tuesday rule is worth double-checking if your trip spans month-end. The California Science Center is open daily, and its permanent galleries are free, which makes it the default anchor for a budget Monday.

The third cluster sits outside central Los Angeles. The Huntington in San Marino, the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena and the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach all open on Mondays, and all three are day-trip distances from the core of the city. If your Monday falls on the first Friday of the month, incidentally, the Norton Simon is free from 4pm to 7pm, though that is a Friday perk rather than a Monday one.

Here is the full Monday picture at a glance:

A note on the La Brea Tar Pits, because it confuses people: the outdoor Hancock Park and the Lake Pit are open to walk on a Monday and cost nothing, but the museum building itself is closed for renovation, on every day of the week, not just Mondays. The outdoor excavator tour is the product that currently runs there. Do not plan an indoor visit.

Why So Many Los Angeles Museums Close On Monday

Museums close on Monday for staffing and conservation reasons, not because of low visitor demand. Monday is the traditional quiet day in the international museum world, and Los Angeles follows the convention: the Getty Center, The Broad, MOCA, the Hammer, the Fowler, the Autry, the Skirball and the Griffith Observatory all shut on the same weekday. The pattern is predictable, which at least makes it plannable.

The Monday closure is a museum-industry convention that predates Los Angeles. Galleries need one day a week without visitors to install exhibitions, run conservation work and give staff a guaranteed break, and Monday is the lowest-attendance day in most cities, so it is the day that costs the least to close. Los Angeles adopted the pattern wholesale, which is why the closures cluster so heavily. A visitor who assumes the biggest names keep seven-day hours gets caught out.

The closed list on a Monday is long enough to be worth memorizing, because several of these are the museums people most associate with the city:

Two patterns hide in that table. First, whole neighborhoods go dark together: both Westwood art museums close on Monday, both Griffith Park institutions close on Monday, and the entire Bunker Hill art cluster closes on Monday. Second, the closures create accidental pairings. If you were planning the Griffith Observatory and the Autry on the same day, that day simply cannot be a Monday.

The practical takeaway is that Monday rewards the Miracle Mile and Exposition Park, punishes Bunker Hill and Griffith Park, and leaves Hollywood and the day-trip destinations mostly intact. If your itinerary is already drafted, the Los Angeles museum itinerary guide can be reshuffled around this with a little notice.

If Monday is your only free day and you want a guaranteed ticket rather than a walk-up gamble, these three are the strongest Monday-safe picks in the city, and each one sells a real admission product:

The observatory in that band is the exception worth flagging honestly: the building itself is closed on Mondays, so its ticketed experiences belong to your Tuesday-through-Sunday plans. The Petersen and the Warner Bros. Studio Tour, by contrast, run on Mondays, and both are among the few big-name film and car attractions in the region that do.

The Best Museum Picks For A Monday In Los Angeles

For a single Monday museum stop, the Petersen Automotive Museum is the strongest pick: it is open daily, sits on the Miracle Mile beside two other Monday-open museums, and holds a 4.8 rating. The Natural History Museum and the California Science Center make the best family pairing, and the Warner Bros. Studio Tour in Burbank is the best Monday option for film fans willing to book a timed slot.

The Petersen earns the top slot on convenience as much as content. It is open every day of the week, one of only a handful of Los Angeles museums that can say so, and its location at 6060 Wilshire Boulevard puts it within a short walk of the Academy Museum, which is also open on Mondays. Admission is $22 at the door, visitors can prebook through the operator's live listing from the same price, and the museum's rating stands at 4.8, with the review count best read on the listing itself. The Vault, the basement collection of rare and historic cars, is a separate ticket and is covered in detail in the Petersen Vault worth-it review.

For families, the Exposition Park pairing is hard to beat. The Natural History Museum holds a 4.6 rating across more than five hundred reviews, charges $18 general admission, and closes only on the first Tuesday of the month. Next door, the California Science Center keeps its permanent galleries free and open daily, with IMAX films and special exhibitions ticketed separately. One important correction for anyone researching online: Space Shuttle Endeavour is currently off display and will not be viewable until the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center opens on 13 November 2026. Older articles and outdated listicles still describe walking up to the shuttle, and that is simply no longer possible.

The Museum of Tolerance is the Monday option most visitors overlook. It is closed Friday and Saturday, which inverts the usual museum week, so Monday is one of its five open days. General admission is $16 at the door, and a ticketed product sells through the operator's listing from $20.52. Its subject matter is sobering and its presentation is unusually immersive, built around guided timed entry rather than free wandering, so it suits a morning slot when the guided groups are small.

For film and television fans, the Warner Bros. Studio Tour in Burbank runs on Mondays and is the most substantial studio experience in the region. Admission is $79, the tour holds a 4.6 rating, and the review count is best checked on the live listing. It is not a museum in the strict sense, and this site says so plainly, but for a Monday built around Hollywood craft it is the strongest ticketed product in the area. The Warner Bros. Studio Tour length guide covers how much time to set aside.

Madame Tussauds Hollywood rounds out the Monday list for the Hollywood neighborhood. At $29 general admission, with a 4.6 rating and the review count on the listing, it is a wax attraction rather than a conventional museum, but it is open on a day when the Hollywood Museum, a few blocks north on Highland Avenue, is not. If your Monday is anchored to Hollywood Boulevard, the wax museum is effectively the only indoor attraction of its kind in the immediate area that is running.

What A Monday Museum Day Costs, Parking Included

A Monday museum day in Los Angeles costs more in parking than most visitors expect, because several of the Monday-open museums charge for parking even where admission is free or cheap. The California Science Center is free to enter but Exposition Park parking is paid, the Petersen listing notes a $17 parking fee on top of the $22 ticket, and LACMA parking is paid on-site. Budget for the car at every stop, not per person.

Parking is the number people forget, and in Los Angeles it can exceed the price of the ticket. The verified anchor figures are at the Getty properties, which are closed on Mondays but set the benchmark: Getty Center parking is $25 per car, dropping to $15 after 3pm, per the museum's own parking page at getty.edu. The Getty Villa matches that, at $25 per car, $15 after 3pm and $10 after 6pm for evening events. Those figures are safe to state as numbers because they have been verified against the museum's own site.

For the Monday-open museums, the honest position is more hedged. The Petersen's ticket listing states that its price excludes a $17 parking fee. At the Hammer Museum, which is closed Mondays but useful for comparison, parking runs roughly $8 to $9 for the first hours with validation and a daily maximum around $22 to $30. The Fowler Museum at UCLA, likewise closed Mondays, sits on campus parking quoted at about $5 an hour up to a $17 daily maximum. For any other museum on the Monday list, including LACMA and the Exposition Park pair, assume parking is paid and check the museum's own site for the current figure rather than trusting a third-party summary. The rest of the planning pages sit on Los Angeles Museums.

Here is the Monday cost picture for one adult arriving by car:

One structural point about passes, because it is the single most common wrong answer on this topic: there is no Los Angeles CityPASS. Southern California CityPASS exists, but it covers Disneyland, SeaWorld and LEGOLAND, theme parks rather than museums, and presenting it as a museum pass is a mistake that appears on several ranking guides today. The real multi-attraction product for this city is Go City Los Angeles, from $94 for the All-Inclusive pass covering more than 35 attractions, or from $244 for the Plus version that adds Universal Studios. Whether a pass pays off on a single Monday is doubtful, but for a week-long trip it belongs on the comparison table in the Los Angeles museum pass guide.

Monday Day Trips: The Huntington, Norton Simon And Long Beach

The three best Monday day trips from central Los Angeles are the Huntington in San Marino at $34, the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena at $20, and the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach at $49.95. All three open on Mondays, all three sit outside the core of the city, and all three are full-day destinations in their own right rather than add-ons.

The Huntington is the strongest Monday day trip in the region, and it is one of the few major institutions that treats Monday as a normal operating day. Admission is $34, the museum closes on Tuesdays, and reservations are required on Fridays through Sundays, holidays and peak season, which means a Monday visit is often the easiest one to book. The first Thursday of each month is free with an advance ticket, a perk that does not apply to Mondays but is worth knowing if your trip is flexible. Give it a full day: the how long at the Huntington guide explains why a short stop is not realistic.

The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena is the quieter alternative, and it pairs naturally with the Huntington since both sit northeast of downtown. Admission is $20, the museum closes on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and it is free on the first Friday of the month from 4pm to 7pm, plus always free for students, visitors under 18, members and military. Its collection of European masters is dense for its size, and a Monday afternoon there is typically uncrowded. The Norton Simon worth-it review covers the collection in detail.

Long Beach holds two Monday options. The Aquarium of the Pacific is open daily, charges $49.95 general admission, holds a 4.5 rating across nearly eight hundred reviews, and children under 3 enter free on the ticketed product. MOLAA, the Museum of Latin American Art, is the counterpart in the same city, but it closes on Mondays and Tuesdays, so the aquarium is the Monday play in Long Beach. It is not a museum in the strict sense, and this site says so plainly, but for a science-and-nature day it delivers more per hour than anything else in the area. Discount angles are covered in the aquarium discount tickets guide.

What To Do When Your First Choice Is Closed On Monday

If the Getty Center, The Broad or the Griffith Observatory is closed on your Monday, the fix is either to swap the day or swap the museum. The Getty and the observatory reopen on Tuesday, The Broad reopens Tuesday as well, and in the meantime the Miracle Mile and Exposition Park clusters are running at full hours. Do not show up at a closed gate hoping for a partial opening. There is none.

The Griffith Observatory is the closure that stings most, because it is free to enter and because its view is the city's signature. The building is closed Mondays, its planetarium shows are ticketed on the days it does open, and parking near the building is paid, with free parking further downhill. If Monday is your only observatory day, the honest answer is that there is no substitute inside Los Angeles for the view, and the practical answer is to move it to any other day of the week. When you do, the Griffith Observatory tickets and parking guide covers the timed-show and parking decisions in full.

The Getty Center's Monday closure has a hidden silver lining for planners: the Getty Villa, the Pacific Palisades sibling, is closed on Tuesdays instead. That means a midweek visitor can do the Villa on Tuesday and the Center on Wednesday, in either order, and never hit a closed door. Both are free to enter with a required timed reservation, both charge $25 per car for parking, and the Villa reopened after the January 2025 Palisades Fire. The trade-offs between the two are laid out in the Getty Villa versus Getty Center comparison.

The Broad's Monday closure is the one that strands people, because its free timed tickets are released monthly and go fast, so a missed Monday often means the next release rather than the next day. Special exhibitions are ticketed separately. If contemporary art is the mission and Monday is the day, the honest fallback is that MOCA Grand Avenue is also closed, and the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA is temporarily closed as well, so the Bunker Hill art cluster cannot be salvaged on a Monday. The practical move is to shift the art day to Tuesday and use Monday for the Miracle Mile instead, where the art museums in Los Angeles guide has several open options.

One more closure to plan around, because search results still get it wrong: the La Brea Tar Pits museum building is closed for renovation, every day of the week. Hancock Park, the Lake Pit and the outdoor excavator tour are what is open, and they are free to walk on a Monday. The indoor museum will not be part of any visit until the renovation ends, so treat the outdoor site as the attraction and plan accordingly.

A Ready-Made Monday Itinerary That Actually Works

A workable Monday runs the Miracle Mile in the morning, Exposition Park in the afternoon and Hollywood or Burbank in the evening: the Petersen or Academy Museum from opening, lunch near Wilshire, the Natural History Museum and the free California Science Center galleries after lunch, and either Madame Tussauds or the Warner Bros. Studio Tour to close. It fits three museums and one paid parking structure per stop into a single day without crossing the city twice.

The itinerary works because the Monday-open museums cluster geographically, which the closed ones mostly do not. Here is the shape of the day:

The budget version of the same day drops the Petersen and starts at the California Science Center, whose permanent galleries cost nothing, then adds the Natural History Museum at $18 and finishes at the GRAMMY Museum at $22.5. Count parking and that is a three-museum Monday for less than the price of a single Warner Bros. Studio Tour ticket, which is competitive for a city where a single Getty visit costs $25 per car in parking alone. LA County residents can push it lower still: the Natural History Museum admits county residents free on weekday afternoons on site only, and LACMA, on the same corridor, is free for county residents with ID on weekdays after 3pm.

Two cautions to close the planning. First, the first Tuesday of the month closes the Natural History Museum, so a Monday that falls at the start of a month is fine but the following day is not, which matters if your trip spans both. Second, holiday Mondays invert the pattern: several museums that normally close on Monday open on holiday Mondays instead, but hours shift and timed tickets tighten, so confirm on the museum's own site before driving. The free museums in Los Angeles guide covers which of these stops cost nothing at all, and holiday weeks deserve a fresh check.

If your Monday turns into a two-day visit, the second day unlocks everything this article has set aside: the Getty Center, The Broad, MOCA, the Hammer and the Griffith Observatory all reopen on Tuesday, and the indoor museums for a rainy day guide is a good template for that second day if the weather turns.

These three picks cover the Monday-safe and Tuesday-rewarding corners of the city in one place:

Common Questions About Museums Open On Monday In Los Angeles