The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced last week that it planned to raise its admission price to $25 from $20. Though the price is only recommended (you can pay a penny and get in, as the museum hates to see newspapers write, and as newspapers love to keep writing), the announcement has occasioned an outpouring of sentiment on the Web and elsewhere about the cost of museumgoing. Do sizable admission prices, even suggested ones, discourage lower-income visitorship? (Of course.) Should museums that receive taxpayer money charge for admission? (A lot of people say no, even though many museums receive relatively little in the way of public subsidies.) Do museums have a kind of moral obligation, like libraries, to be free? (Museum directors are divided on the subject. Some, like Philippe de Montebello, the former director of the Met, point out that almost all cultural goods come with a price. “Philosophically, what is it about a work of art that makes it mandatory that it should be available for nothing?” he has asked.)
The Cultural Calculation: Museum Fees
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is raising its suggested admission price to $25.
By RANDY KENNEDY
Published: June 9, 2011
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ArtsBeat Blog: Metropolitan Museum Raising Fee (June 3, 2011)
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The Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum charges $24.
From its opening in 1870, the Met had a mandatory admission charge one or more days a week, but that ended in 1940. In 1970 it instituted its voluntary-price system at the suggestion of an honorary trustee, an investment banker, who got the idea from church bazaars. Today few museumgoers probably think of church when digging into their pockets. But in their value calculus, they invariably compare museums with other kinds of places for cultural enjoyment and entertainment. Is this museum cheaper than a good musical, a movie, a concert, a Yankees game, and if not, how does what’s inside stack up against those things?
The arts blogger Paddy Johnson uses dining as a yardstick. “My two cents: I’ve never thought the public should be charged to see their own belongings,” she wrote recently about the Met increase, “but as long as that’s happening, I don’t think museum ticket prices should fall outside the price of a midrange restaurant. In other words, if visiting the museum is a treat, it should still be one many people can afford. This is definitely pushing the limit of ‘midrange.’ ”
The comparison shopping is also museum to museum. For its recommended $25 (the increase takes effect July 1), the Met provides acres of art and imposes no additional charge for a steady stream of special exhibitions. For a mandatory $18, the Frick provides a fraction of its paintings and sculptures, though it does have three blockbuster Vermeers. At a mandatory $24, the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum is among the most expensive in the city, but you’ll soon be able to admire the space shuttle Enterprise against the city’s skyline. Is $96 for a family of four worth it? Here is a roundup of New York museum prices to help you with your own cultural math.
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