National monuments and museums in Washington DC are closed during the U.S. government shutdown.Getty
It depends. Some National Parks are open, but access could change without notice. The official National Parks Service (NPS) website states there are “Closure” alerts at 387 of the 737 parks, historic sites, and national monuments it oversees. Websites are not updated. Many services, including restrooms and visitors centers, are closed. Educational programs are probably canceled. Park roads, lookouts, trails and open-air memorials will mostly remain accessible to the public, according to Department of Interior guidelines. Except when weather causes road closures because the people that plow are furloughed.
That’s one example of the way government agencies are stitching together a crazy quilt in the midst of the longest shutdown in history, trying to keep museums, parks, monuments and historic houses open to the public. As the shutdown wears on, we can expect more confusion: the management of NPS sites is happening on a case-by-case basis, and changes by the day.
What about museums? Again, it depends. All 19 of the Smithsonian museums and galleries, as well as the National Zoo, are closed. (However, staff at the zoo, though unpaid, is caring for the animals.) These closures include, in addition to such Washington DC sites as the African-American Museum and the Air and Space Museum, two Smithsonian-run museums in New York City: the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and the American Indian Museum Heye Center.
The Smithsonian museums are losing a lot: they’re accustomed to drawing 1 million visitors a month
Private museums in Washington are open, so you can still visit the Newseum, the African American Civil War Museum and the National Building Museum. Many of these organizations are offering free admission to government employees during the shutdown and report that, since Smithsonian museums have closed, their visitor numbers have risen steeply.
Likewise, many popular historic sites such as Mount Vernon and Monticello are in private hands and not affected by the government shutdown. Others are only partially operated by the federal government: the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, remains open because it’s staffed and run by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute, a nonprofit organization, not a governmental entity. The same is true for the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Austin, Texas. However, the other 11 presidential libraries are closed. For a while, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California stayed open, despite the shutdown. But now it, too, has closed.
Nothing is as simple as whether an attraction is federally owned or not. For example, the National Archives closed when the shutdown began on December 22. But the Library of Congress and the U.S. Botanic Garden — and the Capitol Visitor Center and Capitol Building, ironically — are operating as normal; their funding came via the 2019 Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill. The Kennedy Center and Ford’s Theatre operate in a gray area. Neither uses federal funds for performances, so those will go on as scheduled, but the Kennedy Center’s hours are slashed, because the government pays for essential services, such as cleaning and security, and the National Park Service-run museum at Ford’s Theatre is closed.
If you are planning a visit to Washington, to a National Park, or to a historic site, do your research the old-fashioned way. Find your destination’s phone number and make a call. If no one answers, it’s probably because staff members are at home, anxiously awaiting news. Hopefully, they will soon be back to work and we will be able to visit our favorite pieces at the National Gallery of Art.