National Geographic Museum — Attraction in Washington

Within the National Geographic HQ is an off-the-beaten path museum. Celebrating the work of National Geographic, the museum rotates photography-centric exhibits showcasing the wonders of the universe. After two years closed due to the pandemic, the museum reopened with safety protocols (mask and social distancing requirements) on February 16, 2022. Here's what you should know:

1. Price: It's one of the few museums in Washington, D.C. that requires a paid ticket, but the prices aren't outrageous. Regular tickets are $15 and includes all exhibits in the museum. For students, military and seniors, it's $12. Children 5-12 are $10 and children under five are free. Reserve tickets online to guarantee entry.

2. Hours: The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

3. Exhibits: They change, but when they reopened, they had two exhibits. The first explores wildlife photography and the photographers behind the photographs. This exhibit is photo heavy, but includes a few interactive parts like an area to have your photo taken and a film with stunning footage of wildlife. The second exhibit showcases Mount Everest and the people who have climbed it. This exhibit is more interactive than the first, but both are worth it.

4. Store: At the end of the museum is a store with photograph-decorated walls and lots of merchandise from backpacks to cloths to books. There's also a kids section with a reading area filled with giant stuffed animals.

5. Location: Located in downtown D.C., the museum is within walking distance to neighborhoods like Dupont Circle and Logan Circle filled with restaurants. When it reopens, The Coffee Bar on 17th Street NW brews a quality cup of coffee. Street parking can often be found along Rhode Island Ave NW near the Canopy Hotel. Although blocks away, visiting Planet Word, a museum about language in a historic school, and the National Geographic Museum is doable in...

I finally got a chance to visit this museum this past weekend and it was pretty great overall. New visitors should be warned though that if you're expecting something on the scale of a Smithsonian then you'll be disappointed. The exhibits span the bottom floors of two adjoining buildings (maybe more like 1 and a half) and rotate every few months. The two main exhibits right now are a pretty moving collection of portraits of various animal species. A number of them are rare, endangered, or already extinct so the exhibit notes that these may be the only portraits of them that ever exist. Very sad. The other exhibit is an Indiana Jones prop collection that utilizes audio and video headsets to guide your through props from all four movies, behind the scenes information, storyboards, and stories from production. Nat Geo was also smart in that they integrated real life archaeological exhibits in this display so that you could understate how the real process plays out and where the movie drew its inspiration from. The only negative is that due to the small size of the walkways it can get cramped as everyone just tends to stop in order to watch their tablet screens.

The exhibit in the other building is an undersea photo gallery that documents efforts to protect more of the worlds oceans. This building also houses a movie theater that's currently showing a 3d film on Jerusalem that is narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch. It's worth a watch for the scenery and aerial shots alone!

Last bit of advice, when you buy your tickets they'll give you an entry time to actually go into the museum. For me it was 30 minutes later but I'd imagine it could be longer during busier hours. Plan for the...

I’m a career scientist and a college administrator. I have also been a long-time follower of and subscriber to various National Geographic publications since my childhood. I frequently recommend NatGeo as an accessible resource for laypeople with an interest in science--young and old, alike. Following a recent visit to the NatGeo museum in Washington, DC, however, I feel compelled to post a public critique. In display after display, I found myself repeatedly surprised, disappointed, and ultimately disgusted by use of Christian-centric, anti-Semitic notations for dating artifacts. I cannot remember the last time I went to a respectable museum and saw "BC or AD" to denote the date…of anything. These terms are not only squarely centered on a Christian schema of time and culture, but by their very nature minimize the relevance of other groups by forcing them to conform to a Christian median. The surprising use of those anachronistic terms immediately calls into question other aspects that inevitably shape comparative cultural portrayals and exhibits. The scientific community, political entities, and most modern educational institutions have long used the more evenhanded "BCE or CE." To put it clearly, NatGeo’s use of this anachronism completely shocked me, and cast dark doubts on other aspects of the organization's underlying intentions. Given the above rationale, I urge National Geographic to issue a formal, public apology for this misstep AND to correct it at their museum as soon...