NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale Visitor Guide 2026

NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale is open Tuesday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m., is closed on Mondays, and stays open until 7 p.m. on the first Thursday of every month.

The museum on Las Olas Boulevard lists its holiday schedule on its hours page: closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and New Year's Day, open 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, and closed on July 4 (NSU Art Museum, hours and admission). For the 2026 season that means Thursday, November 26, and Friday, December 25, are closed days, while Thursday, December 24, is a short day. Last verified: October 15, 2026, on the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale website.

The first Thursday program, which the museum calls Sunny Days and Starry Nights, pairs free entry with two extra evening hours, so November 5 and December 3, 2026 are the next free first Thursdays at One East Las Olas Boulevard. The hours page lists Sunday public tours at 2 p.m., and groups book tours through the group sales office.

An adult ticket at NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale costs $16, seniors pay $10, military $8 and college students with ID $5, while teenagers 13 to 17, children 12 and under, veterans, members and Nova Southeastern University students and staff enter free.

The Bank of America Museums on Us offer at the Las Olas Boulevard museum covers cardholders on the first full weekend of each month, and the Museums for All program admits four people free for each SNAP EBT card shown with a valid photo ID (NSU Art Museum, admission). The museum warns that ticket pricing may change for special ticketed exhibitions, so the general admission figures above apply to the regular galleries.

One program on the page has already run its course for the year: the Blue Star Museums free entry for active duty military personnel and their families, including National Guard and Reserve, at NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale ran from May 16 to September 7, 2026. Outside that window the hours page lists a military rate of $8, while U.S. veterans and their dependents in the same household are listed as free under a separate line. Broward College students are free on the same terms as Nova Southeastern University students, faculty and staff.

NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale is at One East Las Olas Boulevard, on the northeast corner of Las Olas Boulevard and Andrews Avenue, across from Huizenga Plaza in downtown Fort Lauderdale.

The museum's own directions from I-95 are to take the Broward Boulevard exit, number 27, east to Andrews Avenue, then turn south on Andrews Avenue to Las Olas Boulevard (NSU Art Museum, directions and parking). From Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport the route follows US 1 north, turns left on SE 24th Street and then right on South Andrews Avenue for nearly two miles to Las Olas Boulevard, with the museum on the right. From A1A at Fort Lauderdale Beach the route runs two miles west on East Las Olas Boulevard.

Two free City of Fort Lauderdale services reach the Las Olas corridor. The LauderGO! Las Olas Link community shuttle runs Friday from 10 a.m. to 8:05 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 8:25 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. (City of Fort Lauderdale, LauderGO! Community Shuttle). The LauderGO! Water Trolley loops the New River daily from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. with a 20 to 30 minute wait at each stop (City of Fort Lauderdale, LauderGO! Water Trolley).

The water trolley stop at Huizenga Plaza, the plaza the museum faces, is not in service as of October 15, 2026: the city lists the Huizenga Plaza and Bubier Park stop, and the Riverfront Plaza stop, as currently unavailable due to ongoing construction. The whole water trolley service also stops from October 28 through November 1, 2026 for the Boat Show, and the vessel is not wheelchair accessible; the city names the community shuttle as the alternative. The stops still listed on the route include Riverwalk Laura Ward Park, Esplanade Park, Tarpon River, New River Yacht Club, Downtown and Smoker Park, which with the two closed stops make the eight stops the city page refers to.

The museum sends drivers to the Riverwalk Center Garage, which the City of Fort Lauderdale lists at 150 SE 2nd Street for $3.00 per hour, open 24 hours a day with 552 spaces.

The Riverwalk Center garage takes bills and credit cards but no coins, carries two electric vehicle charging stations, and has a 7 foot 5 inch ramp clearance (City of Fort Lauderdale, public parking garages). The City Hall Garage at 100 N. Andrews Avenue, entered from NE 1st and NE 2nd streets, is enforced from 8 a.m. to midnight except on Sundays, city holidays and evening City Commission meetings, so its meters are not enforced on Sundays.

The two sources describe the Riverwalk Center entrance differently. The museum's page puts the entrance on SE 1st Avenue across from the Broward County Main Library, with a second entrance on SE 2nd Street, while the city's garage table lists the entrance on SE 2nd Avenue. Drivers using GPS can aim for SE 2nd Street, which both pages name. Holders of a valid disabled placard park free for up to four hours at any meter on SE 1st Avenue, according to the museum, which also recommends paying for a minimum of two hours at the garage meters.

Five exhibitions fill NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale in October 2026, led by Michael Richards: Escape Plan, which opened September 16, 2026, and the permanent Surrounded Islands documentation show.

The current exhibitions page also lists two shows as upcoming, Frozen Gestures and Ragnar Kjartansson: Sunday Without Love, without opening dates as of October 15, 2026 (NSU Art Museum, currently on view). Four of the five shows on view close within five weeks of each other, between February 7 and March 14, 2027, so a winter visit to the Las Olas Boulevard galleries is the last chance to see the Glackens, Meyerowitz, Richards and Lam installations together.

The museum's own pages differ on the Surrounded Islands show: the exhibitions page lists it through spring 2027, while the about page says NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale became the permanent home of the Surrounded Islands documentation exhibition in 2024, covering the public art project Christo and Jeanne-Claude created on Biscayne Bay in Miami in 1983 (NSU Art Museum, about the museum).

NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, founded in 1958 and part of Nova Southeastern University since 2008, holds more than 7,500 works in its permanent collection.

The museum's 83,000 square foot building on Las Olas Boulevard opened in 1986 to a design by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes and contains more than 25,000 square feet of exhibition space, the 256-seat Horvitz auditorium, a museum store and a cafe (NSU Art Museum, about the museum). In 2008 the museum became part of Nova Southeastern University, which it describes as Florida's largest private research university.

The collection page names two holdings that set the Fort Lauderdale museum apart: the largest holdings in America by the postwar European Cobra artists, and the largest collection anywhere of works and archival material by the American painter William J. Glackens and his circle, including John Sloan, George Bellows and Maurice Prendergast (NSU Art Museum, about the collection). The Latin American and Cuban collection includes works promised by Stanley and Pearl Goodman, among them Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo, Wifredo Lam and Leonora Carrington.

A promised gift of 100 contemporary works from the collection of David Horvitz and Francie Bishop Good, with an emphasis on multicultural and women artists such as Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker and Ana Mendieta, adds to the contemporary side of the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale holdings. The William J. Glackens Research Collection and Study Center is the central repository for the Glackens materials the museum owns.

NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale keeps bags larger than 11 by 17 by 6 inches out of the galleries, bans flash photography and food and drink in the galleries, and is wheelchair accessible on every floor by elevator.

Backpacks of any size, shopping bags, umbrellas and luggage are checked at the admissions counter, and phone conversations are not allowed in the galleries (NSU Art Museum, policies and accessibility). Sketching is permitted in pencil only, with no ink or paint, in sketchbooks no larger than eight and a half by eleven inches.

The entrance, public areas and galleries at One East Las Olas Boulevard are wheelchair accessible, and wheelchairs are available at the admission desk on a first come, first served basis. Visitors who need special accommodations are asked to call 954-262-0240 at least 7 days before the visit. Groups book tours through the museum's group sales office at 954-262-0204, and the main line for NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale is 954-525-5500 (NSU Art Museum, hours and admission).