The Cost of "Free": Admission Fees at American Art Museums
by Gypsy McFelter
This article was published in Museum News
January/February 2007.
By for-profit standards, it’s illogical. A business model with costs greater than five times the revenue is not one that most executives would consider successful. But that is what keeps museums open—that and funding from individuals, corporations, foundations and the government. In the nonprofit world, an admission fee rarely covers what it costs to deliver services.
American art museums are a prime example. In 2004, the median entrance fee to an art museum was $7. The median cost to the museum for each visitor was $35.98, which included staff salaries, security, insurance, educational programs, conservation and a host of other expenses.
In American art museums, the industry average is this: Admissions income provides only 5 percent of the operating budget. This figure can vary widely, from as much as 15 percent at the Museum of Modern Art in New York to 0 percent for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., which does not charge admission.
If earned income opportunities inside the museum are increasing — approximately 18 percent of operating revenue comes from items purchased at the museum store or gift shop, meals at the restaurant or café, space rental for receptions or meetings, even parking in some instances —then has the admission fee become expendable?
Museum theorists such as Elaine Heumann Gurian point out that admission fees may be the single biggest obstacle preventing museums from fulfilling their missions as educational institutions that are open and accessible to the widest range of visitors from all income levels and backgrounds. But is the financial position of most art museums so precarious that the 5 percent of operating budget provided by admissions fees is indispensable to the survival of the institution? Is there a middle ground between free admission and a standard entrance fee?
Admission Fees: Setting the Right Price
Potential visitors—especially families with children—are often concerned about the financial costs associated with a museum visit, such as transportation, parking and lunch. As the costs have risen, visitors expect greater value for their admission dollars. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when most of America’s encyclopedic museum collections were founded, these institutions were free to the public. Barons of industry and finance who had the resources and foresight to establish some of America’s greatest art collections wanted to ensure that their cultural taste would be shared with the masses. To that end, some founders even planned for the perpetuity of free public admission, as seen in Charles Frye’s provisions for the Frye Art Museum, which opened in Seattle in 1952. The St. Louis Art Museum provides another example of a long-standing commitment to free admission, having born the inscription “Dedicated to Art and Free to All” over its entrance since 1904.
Yet as the American economy expanded over the decades since the founding of our first public art collections, prices have also have risen for virtually every commodity—including admission to museum collections. In August 2006 one of those venerable encyclopedic museums, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, dropped a bomb when it announced a 33 percent increase—from $15 to $20 per adult visitor—to bring the Met’s recommended entry fee in line with those at other New York museums, most notably the Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) $20 charge.
Many of us have visited museums and seen the words “suggested donation” or “recommended amount” next to the admission fees. The actual amount collected per visitor is often significantly lower than the suggested amount—as much as 25 percent lower per visitor, according to Faye Steiner, whose study on admission fees appeared in a 1997 issue of the Journal of Cultural Economics. Steiner wrote that “in contrast to other prices [within an anonymously cited museum], the current admission fee is actually a ‘suggested donation’ of $6.50. As a result, consumers do not face a ‘price,’ and the average admission fee actually collected for any day is $4.78.”
Current figures from AAM’s 2006 Museum Financial Information indicate that 50 percent of American art museums charge an adult entry fee (197 art museums were included in the survey). Large, urban institutions are most likely to levy a fee, while university museums are least likely. A significant decrease in federal and state funding of visual arts since the 1980s might have had a strong effect on the price of admission to public art collections. Museums may have felt that admission fees represented a steadier, more reliable source of income—a revenue stream that they could predict and, to a certain extent, control. As illustrated in New York, increased competition in the marketplace has also been a significant factor. In 1950 there were approximately 100 museums in the U.S. dedicated to the visual arts. AAM now counts more than 750 art museums just within its own institutional membership, which is 16 percent of all U.S. museums. The best available estimate is that there are currently some 4,000 art museums in the country—and they all must compete for audience members, donors and earned income.
The New School of Free Admission
Just months before the Met was criticized for the steep increase in its recommended price, the Art Institute of Chicago changed from a suggested to a mandatory admission fee, although the dollar amount remained the same: $12. Preliminary attendance figures since the June 2006 change have remained reasonably consistent, with equivalent seasonal variations. Chai Lee, assistant director of public affairs for the Art Institute, says that the museum has seen neither a significant increase nor decrease in earned revenue since the restructuring.
Where the Chicago museum has seen a difference is visitorship during its free admission hours. Following the lead of other urban art museums, including MoMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago switched from free Tuesdays to free Thursday evenings, from 5-8 p.m. Thanks to sponsorship from Ford Motor Company, evening hours had been extended even further during the summer months, from 5-9 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays.
At the time of this writing, there is not much more than anecdotal evidence available on the desired result of racially and ethnically diverse visitors during free evening hours, but the Art Institute of Chicago has every reason to believe its change in free hours achieved this. “We had Chicagoans in the museum who reported that it was their first-ever visit,” Lee said. “We had parents telling us that they were grateful that the free hours allowed them to easily bring their children after work. We had more visitors per free hour than we did when the free hours were on Tuesdays.”
Ultimately, offering designated times for free admission has become the most common method for museums to welcome first-time and lower-income visitors. This option is the most commonly found equilibrium between the competing priorities of ideology, practicality and economics. By designating periods of free admission to attract the infrequent visitor, museums can more easily justify charging an entrance fee on a regular basis. Based on figures from 2006 Museum Financial Information, more than two-thirds of museums across all disciplines currently offer a free admission day—but this figure may be even higher within art organizations. A small survey of 35 art museums in the western United States showed that 16 were free all of the time. Nineteen had general admission fees, with 15 regularly offering limited free admission and four having flexible admission policies, including suggested donations for entry and free admission for special community events
Art museums are also involved with new initiatives to develop a future generation of patrons for art and cultural institutions. One of these was presented at the 2006 AAM Annual Meeting session “Museums and Low-Income Individuals: The Data Says They Don’t Come. How Do We Make a Change?” Cool Culture, an inventive nonprofit formed in 1999, has created a family pass to 71 cultural institutions in New York City. The pass is intended for low-income families, and the program’s primary clients are Head Start and other subsidized child-care centers. Two-thirds of participants have household incomes below the federal poverty line.
The benefits of a program like this include the ability to track low-income visitors and help them through a potentially intimidating first visit to a museum. Although transportation is not provided, participants can visit at any time and return as many times as they wish. Cool Culture’s success is in the numbers: Families who have the Cool Culture Pass are four times more likely to visit a museum than families without the pass, according to Linda Steele, executive director.
The Many Benefits of Museum Membership
People who join art museums as members contribute important financial and community support to their institutions. However, museums that do not charge a general admission fee usually have much smaller membership programs. Because a yearly membership charge typically includes reduced or free entry to the museum, this becomes an attractive incentive for membership purchases. Alternatively, one might logically conclude that museums with no admission fee will attract larger audiences and thus have a better chance at earning more revenue within the museum: more visitors, more sales in shops or restaurants. Upon closer scrutiny, this assumption may not be true. According to Mary Beth Armbruster, the Aquarium of the Pacific’s membership director and a presenter at the 2006 AAM Annual Meeting session “Brave New World: Modern Day Technologies for Membership Fundraising,” museum members spend almost twice as much money in the gift shop or on food services as other visitors who are not members. In her detailed economic analysis of a large, urban museum, Steiner similarly found that museum visitors who did not pay an admission fee were likely to spend even less on additional goods or services than the average visitor who paid a fee to enter, even they were not museum members. Her research indicated that total restaurant and shop purchases actually declined by almost 50 percent per visitor during the museum’s free day, in comparison to the 300 percent increase in overall attendance.
It is important to note that museum members typically receive a discount at the gift shop or restaurant, which may be a factor in this group’s spending behavior. The San Jose Museum of Art revealed this phenomenon as part of its impetus to institute an $8 admission fee in August 2006, after five years of free admission. Despite the near doubling of the California museum’s annual attendance—to almost 200,000—when its admission fee was removed in 2001, “Membership initially stalled, and then began to drop. Gift shop and restaurant revenues decreased,” Executive Director Daniel Keegan told a Baltimore Sun reporter in September. “We think that something psychological goes on. When people know they don’t have to open their wallets to get in, oftentimes they won’t open them at all.”
Art Museums and the Local Audience
Can art museums be accessible to an entire community if they charge an entrance fee? Despite the numerous economic arguments for imposing a charge on visitors, many art museums choose to open their doors for free, expecting to obtain earned income through other means. In October 2006, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Walters Art Museum removed their $10 adult admission fees. Significant funding from the city and county of Baltimore helped to open these museums for free, every day. Additional support from local government agencies and individuals—including an endowment for free admission at the Baltimore Museum of Art—will provide new possibilities for access by the museum’s local audience.
The Cincinnati Art Museum established an endowment for continuous free admission as part of its 2003 Cincinnati Wing expansion capital campaign. The motivation was to “improve access to the museum, increase visitation and enhance the sense of community ownership,” stated former Director Timothy Rub in a 2002 news release. Since then, the museum has seen an increase in first-time visitors as well as new demographics in their visitors. “Today, the museum’s relationship with its community is built on access,” said Cindy Fink, director of external relations. “Eliminating the admission fee has made huge leaps toward enhancing access for our entire community.” This is a dramatic change from the museum’s position 20 years earlier when Gretchen A. Mehring, then coordinator of public services, advocated for an admission fee. She was quoted in the March/April 1984 issue of Museum News: “Don’t be afraid to do it! While attendance may drop, the added revenue can help you maintain an audience because there will now be income for ongoing operations, exhibitions and programs. Our visitors and members understand it and recognize that the income generated is essential to our financial well-being.”
Free Admission: Focus on the West
The results of a short survey that I sent to 75 art museums in the western United States in March 2006 revealed conflicting ideals and practices, parallel to the ongoing national debate over financial barriers to museum attendance. I received 35 responses from museums of various sizes, settings and budgets. The most commonly mentioned benefits of free admission were service to the community and accessibility to a more diverse audience. Increased exposure, attendance and public relations opportunities also ranked high, as did improved opportunities for individual, corporate and foundation support.
The primary drawbacks were lost revenue and the inability to build a membership base. Security concerns also figured prominently. “Free admission days put security at a disadvantage,” said Ronald Hartwell, a guard at the Oakland Museum of California. “The guards are often overwhelmed by the number of visitors,” many of whom are new to museums and unfamiliar with standard “Please Do Not Touch” signs in art exhibitions.
Of the 15 responding museums that offered limited free admission days or hours, more than half reported a significant difference in visitor demographics: seniors, large family groups, school groups, disabled persons and drug or alcohol recovery groups were most likely to attend at these times. Museums in Seattle, Scottsdale, San Diego and the San Francisco Bay area all reported an increase in student visitors on free admission days. Sue Cake, a longtime docent at the Oakland Museum of California, observed that free admission days enabled teachers to assign a museum visit as part of a class lesson, likely a factor for increased student visitation at many museums.
Mirroring the current debate in the museum profession, some respondents to the survey—which was sent only to museums that are not operated by government or universities—were divided over whether to charge admission. While the Nevada Museum of Art does not have a general free admission period, it offers free family days once a month, and admission desk attendants can discount or waive admission fees on a case-by-case basis. “The experience should have value like a movie, going out to eat, a concert or any other leisure-time activity,” said Deputy Director Amy Oppio. “It is . . . important for guests to believe in supporting the organization and its mission.”
Not all respondents shared Oppio’s view. One of the survey questions asked about the ideal admission fee structure. Of the 24 museums that responded to this question, 30 percent said that free admission is the way to go. Midge Bowman, executive director of the Frye Art Museum, responded that art museums “should be free as public libraries are. Without this open admission, they remain elitist institutions.” Nearly every respondent was in favor of some sort of limited free admission as a form of community service. The sole exception was an administrator from a medium-sized California museum. The institution appeared to be forced into a monthly free admission day by its geographic location. “[Our museum] clearly has no value when we give it away for free,” said the administrator.
Keywords: Membership and Community
The struggle between public service and financial stability is age-old for museums. While money drives the choices in daily operations for most museums, membership and community engagement appear as frequently in the admissions debate. Free admission means access for everyone as well as an opportunity to build membership.
Proponents of free general admission to museums in America believe that museums should be held in the same regard as public libraries. In the September/October 2005 issue of Museum News, Elaine Heumann Gurian observes that libraries are generally perceived as worthy of public support. Museum-going behavior, she said, should echo that of the library patron. The visit can be short and focused or leisurely and random, and the public should visit as few or as many times as they wish, with or without a membership card, she argues. In contrast, most museum patrons on a paid visit try to cover as much ground as possible to make their visit worth the price of admission.
Gurian suggests that the placement of the admissions desk/ticket counter and the ineffectiveness of limited free admission policies prevent museums from reaching a broader, less-experienced visitor. “There is a fundamental disconnect between the mission statements we write and the act of imposing an entry fee,” she wrote. “Museums, if they remain oriented toward their paying customers will not . . . feel motivated to become essential elements within the community and an important educational resource for all individuals wishing to learn.” The Cincinnati Art Museum’s removal of admission fees appears to have achieved these desirable results. At this encyclopedic art collection, Fink has found that “free admission allows the community to use its art museum in a new way—on a more frequent and leisurely basis.”
Despite the challenging aspects of free admission days, it is reasonable to conclude that they are vital to a museum’s accessibility. Art museums should evaluate visitation patterns and the needs of visitors on both free and paid days to determine if the current situation achieves an optimal balance of access for the community, revenue for the museum and cultivation of the next generation of patrons. Enacting change from within the museum to promote community accessibility will need broad support from all levels of the museum—from the guards and visitor services staff through the curatorial and directorial teams.
Some might argue that not enough progress has been made in serving diverse audiences since this goal became a more widely recognized priority following the publication of AAM’s 1992 report Excellence and Equity, which outlined museums’ educational role. If the goal of a museum is to create programming that supports the nontraditional or first-time visitor’s experience and encourages them to return, then a policy of free admission in some form—even if restricted to specific days or hours—is worthy of serious consideration.
