There is no shortage of researchers and educators who tell us that art is good for our health and well-being, our quality of life, and as a means for understanding ourselves and others. Where too many people come up short is paying to get into art museums—$25 at the Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and $15 at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; $25 to visit the Museum of Modern Art in New York and $22 for the Guggenheim, $22 at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, $23 at the Art Institute of Chicago, $18 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and $15 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art ($15). (Nor are high prices limited to art museums; the Field Museum in Chicago, for example, charges $18 for adult admission.) Cost is often a reason that people simply don’t go to museums, particularly if they have large families.
What keeps this story from being nothing but depressing is the fact that a small but growing number of museums around the country have moved in the other direction, eliminating admissions fees altogether. Leading the charge are the Dallas Museum of Art and the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, both of which eliminated their fees in 2013. Jack Becker, director and chief executive officer of the Joslyn, claimed that the goal “is accessibility, to never deny the opportunity to view original works of art in our collection to anyone because of an inability to pay.” The Joslyn had been free to the public for decades since its founding in 1931 but added an admissions charge of $8 for adults in the 1990s, annually adding up to roughly $200,000, or between two and four percent of the museum’s total revenues. There was one admission-free time in the course of the week, from 10:00 a.m. to noon on Saturdays, “and we had more than 40 percent of all our weekly visitors show up then,” he said. “That revealed the widespread desire for us to be free, as we always had been, and we followed through on that.”
Losing that two percent in revenues hasn’t harmed the Joslyn museum’s finances, since there has been an increase in visitors: “I’ve seen a lot of people who haven’t been through the doors here in 20 years, if ever, because they couldn’t afford to come,” Becker said. Now, however, more people are eating at the museum’s café and making purchases at its gift shop. “The earned income more than offsets the loss in admissions.”
On a national basis, including all type of museums, zoos, and historic houses, entrance fees account for between two and four percent of overall revenue, although some are notably higher. At the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, admissions amounts of 3.2 percent, while at the Worcester Art Museum Massachusetts it is two percent, based on 2012 figures. The amount is higher at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (5.9 percent), Boston Museum of Fine Arts (6.4 percent), Whitney Museum of American Art (6.8 percent), Katonah Museum of Art (seven percent), New York’s Museum of Modern Art (9.4 percent), Art Institute of Chicago (13 percent), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (14 percent) and New Britain Museum of American Art (16 percent).
Eliminating admissions fees creates a potential shortfall that must be covered in some way. The Dallas Museum of Art’s free admissions policy was abetted by a $9 million anonymous gift. Deputy Director of the museum Robert Stein called the donation “a vote of confidence in the museum’s efforts to make free experiences with art broadly available to the public.” Similarly, the Omaha-based Sherwood Foundation has provided a grant to the Joslyn in order to cover the revenues lost through eliminating admissions. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which recently completed a building expansion, raised a $10 million endowment specifically to support free admission for visitors 18 years of age and younger. Previously, free admission was only available for those 12 and under.
Around the country, many museums offer free admissions on certain days and hours. Mondays are free days at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida, while the Portland Art Museum in Oregon is free between 5:00 and 8:00 p.m. on the fourth Friday of every month and the first Sunday of every month is free admission at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. At the Milwaukee Public Museum, free admission is available on the first Thursday of each month, although Milwaukee County residents receive a $2 discount on general admission every day. New York’s Museum of Modern Art is free on Fridays between 4:00 and 8:00 p.m. and both the Whitney and Guggenheim museums offer a few hours a week in which visitors may pay what they wish (between the hours of 5:45 and 7:45 p.m. on Saturdays at the Guggenheim, between 6:00 and 9:00 p.m. on Fridays at the Whitney). The Art Institute of Chicago has a range of discounted admissions that aim to expand the opportunity for visitors, such as for adults who are Illinois residents ($20) or who live in Chicago ($18), for seniors and students ($17), for students who are residents of Illinois ($14) and students who are residents of Chicago ($12), and children under 14 (free). In addition, there is free admission for all Illinois residents on Thursdays from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. (Mark your calendars accordingly.)
At the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, which instituted free admission Thursdays for all Florida residents five years ago, “we’ve had more visitors coming on Thursdays than the other six days of the week combined,” said the museum’s chief financial officer Lucy Bukowski. After that, it added free Saturdays to all Palm Beach County residents. “Free days bring in more people.” She added that museum’s “basic mission is to be a resource for the community, so getting people through the door is vital.” Even with the loss of admissions revenues for those two days, the overall gate has remained in the realm of $400,000-500,000, representing between five and six percent of the total museum revenues.
Going even further in this direction is the Baltimore Museum of Art, which used to offer free Thursdays but decided in 2006 to completely eliminate general admissions, resulting in an annual loss of $240,000. “However, that was only two percent of our budget, and it seemed worthwhile to forego that two percent in order to attract the people who were put off from coming in because of the price of admissions,” said the museum’s director Doreen Bolger. “We’re a community-based museum in a city of 650,000, and 53 percent of the population is African-American.” She added that, since 2006, “the audience is more diverse.” Just as important, Bolger claimed that eliminating admissions helped to change the perception of the museum among city residents.
Doing away with admissions did lead to a drop-off in memberships of 10 percent, because many regular visitors become members principally to avoid ticket lines, but area businesses and wealthy donors “stepped forward to create a free admission endowment,” which has helped to make up the difference.
Several other museums (including, notable, each Smithsonian museum) are free. In addition, there are some—such as the Brooklyn Museum, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Metropolitan Museum of Art—that only have “recommended” fees, allowing visitors to pay what they wish.
There is a belief that if something is free it isn’t worth anything, but cost and intrinsic value are not synonymous concepts. Strong attendance during the Byzantine assortment of free hours and days at various museums should reveal how great a desire there is to learn and experience notable objects and exhibitions by the general public. There should not be monetary barriers between us and our culture, delivered through our historic homes, zoos, and museums of all types, because it is that cultural heritage that holds us together as a people.
Daniel Grant is the author of The Business of Being an Artist (Allworth Press).
This article has been corrected to accurately describe the prices at the Milwaukee Public Museum and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
