Free At Last: A case for Eliminating Admission Charges in Museums

Free At Last:
A Case for Eliminating Admission Charges in Museums

By Elaine Heumann Gurian

This article was published inMuseum NewsSeptember/October 2005.

If they remain oriented toward their paying customers, museums will never become the town square that we are so fond of talking about. Drop the charges.

I have reluctantly but unequivocally come to the conclusion that general admission charges are the single greatest impediment to making our museums truly and fully accessible.

It is time for a study on the budgetary and social impact that removal of admission charges would have on our various institutions. I am not talking about a straight-line review of the loss of income. This is an obvious mathematical exercise, and I know that the aggregate reduction of revenue would be a whopping big number. Rather, I suggest a search for additional compensatory income streams to counteract the loss, and strategies to help individual organizations develop them. This study would need to deal with probability and percentages of income mixes and factor in the increased “spend per head” that unfettered visitation would represent. The mix might include multi-institutional pass systems, charges for special services, the selling of air rights and increased ownership of for-profit property and business. In addition, the case for increased support needs to be made once again to governments large and small. There are certainly other suggestions out there generated by colleagues but unknown at this time to the author.

I ask for such a study reluctantly. I know that since the 1960s, private, not-for-profit museums increasingly have become dependent on admission fees as their largest source of earned income. I am acutely aware that even with the increased ancillary revenue engendered by increased visitorship, administrators would be forced to find substantial alternate subventions to offset the loss of admissions income. Worse, since adminstrators already have been entrepreneurial in developing additional sources of income, there is no obvious untapped additional source.

To be clear, I am not calling for the removal of all charges to all activities. Quite to the contrary, I believe that to maintain fiscal solvency, museums will have to look for additional fee-for-service opportunities to increase their “per capita” income. I am, however, suggesting that there be free admission to the core functions of the museum, including permanent installations, and perhaps access to ancillary services such as reference centers, libraries, and study storage.

The complete replenishment of lost revenue is unlikely to happen without some level of government intervention. This proposal rests on the notion that governments, even in these hard times, can be persuaded to contribute to the running of museums as a matter of civic responsibility—even though we have not universally persuaded them to do so in the past. However, I believe the case for government assistance cannot be made effectively with general admission charges in place.

This call for the removal of general admission is not a “pie-in-the-sky” proposal. Witness some recent developments. The Labor government of the United Kingdom has reinstated free admission for their largest museums after having imposed charges for some years. The Swedish government has taken away all charges from their major museums in Stockholm as of the first of the year, 2005. The national museums of the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have convinced their governments that they should be free, having made the case, often with position papers, about the benefits and consequences. Like private museums, all these national museums generate a variety of earned income to augment government support.

This proposition, though, is not meant to pertain to national or government museums exclusively. I am especially interested in private museums. There are numerous examples of municipal governments allocating revenues earmarked as operating offsets for cultural organizations. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA), a recipient of local tax revenue, removed its admission fee in the 1990s. It succeeded in involving the community, reorienting its attention and services accordingly, and generating an increased “spend per head” that offset the lost revenue. The MIA could not have attempted that, however, without partial underwriting from the city.

The Arguments for Free Admission

The reasons for a thorough reorganization of museum finances are not primarily monetary but philosophical. I am convinced that charging admissions fundamentally alters the nature of museums and categorically changes their functions and orientation.

Museums cannot argue that they hold the patrimony of all if only some can afford to see it. They cannot argue that they are the meeting ground, town square, forum, and safe civic space if only some citizens—those who pay—can take part. And they cannot argue that they are a resource for those eager to learn if the learner must first determine if she can afford to learn. There is a fundamental disconnect between the mission statements we write and the act of imposing an entry fee.

The operational arguments for establishing free admission are many:

The admission process as the first experience is off-putting and adds to resistance by non-users.
The ways that individuals make use of free venues is entirely different from the ways they visit places that charge. Imposing a charge makes the museum experience a special and occasional one rather than an easily repeatable one. It is the ease of entry and potential of repeated use, I contend, that converts institutions from “nice to have” to “essential” on the civic scale.
Some have complained that the charges imposed by many museums are now exorbitant. The aggregate cost for a young family of four is sufficiently daunting that even traditional museum goers with modest incomes—some of our most motivated visitors—cannot come as often as they might wish.
A need to offer reduced admission costs is recognized by museums that promote various free or reduced admission schemes. However, taking advantage of this requires forethought and planning and so tends to be used primarily by more experienced and organized visitors.
The argument is offered by some cognoscenti that charges help keep attendance down, which they prefer. This is antithetical to our professed desire to allow all who wish to attend to do so.

I do not maintain that the removal of admission charges will, in and of itself, change the profile of museum users. Recent demographic studies of British museum users, following the transition back to free admission, suggests otherwise. (See The Impact of Free Entry to Museums , A. Martin, 2003.) The number of overall visitors rose in all categories, though the percentage of non-museum users did not appreciably change. This potential audience continues to feel that the museum is not their place and so additional work, even with the absence of admission, has to be done. However, a study in Germany, published in the Journal of Cultural Economics 22, no. 1 (1998), revealed “entrance fees to be the only significant subjective barrier” to attendance. Thus free admission, while not the entire answer, remains an essential ingredient toward our goal of inclusion.

Entering

The very sequence of entering a museum and paying a fee changes the museum experience from a casual, easily repeatable occurrence to a special occasion. It is not only the money expended but also the process itself that effectively works as an emotional means test. One cannot enter a museum unobtrusively. I think that potential but ambivalent attendees are made decidedly uncomfortable by the prospect of the first encounter and thus eschew it.

Getting “the lay of the land” visually before commitment works best for the tenuous. Jane Jacobs in her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), extols the virtue of “lurking” as orientation. I am not surprised to see that those institutions that are dependent on the process of “dropping in” and browsing have not imposed charges (nor in most cases visible security screening) at the entry. These places include most libraries, shopping malls, and even airports prior to boarding areas (even though moving security to inside the building increases the vulnerability of the building).

Libraries often have screening at the end of the visit so that leaving with unchecked books is made difficult, while entry and browsing are not. The fact that most libraries are seen by all as a civic service worthy of government support may be related in part to their entrance policy. In any event, it is evident that American politicians are much clearer about their public responsibility to libraries than to museums.

Because libraries are free and organized for browsing, the public uses them differently than museums. People often go to libraries on a focused, self-motivated visit. The librarian makes no judgment about the nature of their quest and, if asked, offers help to solve the questions at hand. Library patrons don’t feel obliged to ration their visits; indeed it is perfectly acceptable to have multiple visits for multiple reasons. The library stay can be short and focused or leisurely and random. The tempo for museum visits, however, tends to be different. Having paid their money, visitors stay as long as they can manage within their social calendar and urgently cover as much ground as possible. They know they will not come back soon.

There is an important exception to this pattern. The museum visitor who functions like the library visitor in an admissions-based museum is the member. Members typically pay a one-time fee that allows for free and arguably more cost-effective access for a year afterward. Such members feel they are entitled to come “free” as often as they like and for as long as they wish. However, only those who plan to come multiple times, and who have ready access to a large, one-time payment, buy memberships. Museum members are a more exclusive community than library users.

There is a system that most closely matches my museum hopes. Some libraries, often in poorer neighborhoods, pay museums an annual negotiated fee. Libraries then offer membership passes on a check-out basis, and the visitor, on presenting such a pass to the museum, enjoys all the rights of a regular member. However, this membership pass requires a two-stage process—going first to the library and then to the museum—which requires much forethought. The library rather than the museum receives the visitor’s gratitude for this pass, reinforcing the sense that the library is a civic amenity while the museum is a restricted location.

Some countries and U.S. cities offer another alternative: the purchase of multiple-site passes to a range of cultural institutions, with the income divided among the participating institutions. This system, a variant on membership, is worth further investigation. (See, for example, “Sharing the Income of a Museum Pass Program,” V. Ginsburgh and I. Zang, in Museum Management and Curatorship 19, no. 4 [2001].)

Volume of Visitors

The British museum situation is both instructive and controversial. Historically U.K. museums charged no admissions and were well used. Taking note of the private, not-for-profit American museum experience where charges were begun largely during the 1960s, the Thatcher government encouraged the imposition of admission fees. Charges, sometimes voluntary, were instituted; attendance dropped precipitously. The current Labor government now has removed charges from many of the major museums, replacing them with an annual infusion of cash for operating expenses. Attendance has increased in large numbers.

Some in the British museum community have argued that this is not an entirely good thing. They point out that the subvention does not fully cover the higher costs of operating and should therefore be increased. They further note that while visitation has increased, the demographic profile of visitors has not changed. (Martin, 2003, page 10.) And they argue that the free museums get unfair advantage over those that still charge.

Limited Free Admission Schemes

Museums see sufficient benefit to free admission that many provide all manner of schemes to offer it in some form. The most prominent are free days. Sometimes these are just once a year, sometimes once a month or once a week. For visitors to participate, they need to be informed, read the paper, plan ahead, and lead an organized life.
The other free situations occur as a marketing effort using coupons, a library card, a free pass, something that you have in your hand. Again, you must be organized and prepared to bring the appropriate material with you.

A third way is organized free events, on special holidays or because a special historic event has happened. Some cities have organized regular free nights, e.g., the third Thursday of the month. When these are consistent and cover more than one institution, they tend to be well attended, but not on the casual basis that patrons use libraries.
The users of these limited free admission offers tend to be the less well-to-do segments of the population that already frequents museums. These are people who know how to take advantage of such events, appreciate museums, and know how to use them.

Where is the Admissions Desk Located?

Along with the question of whether museums should charge admission is the issue of where visitors should be asked to pay. Even those museums that believe they must charge probably could position their admission desks farther back in the visitors’ experience, encouraging “lurking” by placing a wider variety of public experiences in front of the admissions desk. Many newer museums have restaurants and shops located near their front doors but precious few offer experiences without payment. If orientation theaters and interactive experiences—high and/or low tech—along with comfortable seating and public rest rooms were available to anyone who ventured in, these amenities could encourage potential visitors to test the waters. They also could encourage repeat visitation, which eventually might lead to purchasing a ticket for admission to the galleries. I’m reminded of Sherman Lee’s description of the museum as a ‘‘wilderness,” which is something that must be approached in small steps.

Things I Never Knew

There are, it turns out, many academics in economics, sociology, and technology who take the issue of admission charges to museums and heritage sites very seriously. They are interested in models and variables. They use terms museum people are not necessarily familiar with: technology terms like “endpoint admissions control,” “flow set-up latency,” and economic terms like “managerial incentives,” “public and private good,” “market failure,” and “travel cost method,” etc. They conclude that admission charges are an impediment to visitation. Because the case for replacement revenue from government has not been convincingly made, in part because the variables are so interdependent, there will have to be a blend of possible solutions. Nevertheless, these academics see museums as a public good that cannot be sustained through market forces alone. They are joined by politicians who place the value of museums, historic, and natural sites in a mix of rhetoric that includes economic development, a definite but unquantifiable “quality of life” for their constituents, and some notion of long-term responsibility to future generations. A majority of the public seems to agree, maintaining that public funding for cultural institutions in their cities and states is appropriate.

Conclusion

With social scientists maintaining that the variables are many and the economic models not yet perfected, a decision to offer free admission, whence most museums came, must arise from mission, philosophy, experimentation, faith, and gut feeling. Of course, careful economic analysis will be necessary, understanding that without government subvention and some as yet unexplored revenue enhancement, there is no evident solution on the horizon. Nothing is simple in life. If everyone gets free entrance into the building and free access to basic services, then payment for such things as classes, lectures, special exhibitions, and special events seems reasonable. Further, if we are hungry we can all pay for food and, if feeling acquisitive, buy something in the shop. I can live with that. Museums, if they remain oriented toward their paying customers, will not organize themselves as the more widely used resource they can become. They will not feel motivated to become essential elements within the community and an important educational resource for all individuals wishing to learn. Further, the museum that is used only on special occasions or for an organized day out will never become the forum, the meeting ground, the crossroads, the town square that we are fond of talking about.

To me, lifting admission fees, even with the attendant risks, beats charging. The major and undeniable problem with charging is that it is a means test. In the current situation only those who can afford the cost, and think the experience is valuable enough to pay for, can have access to the patrimony that belongs to us all. We cannot continue to discuss inclusion seriously if we continue to charge for general admission.

Notes

Martin Luther King, Jr., used the phrase in this article's title more eloquently and for a much more serious purpose, when he gave his impassioned address on Aug. 28, 1963, in Washington, D.C. However, I borrow it with the hope that the importance of according all of our citizens the equal right to access their patrimony would appeal to him as part of the complex fabric of civil rights.

Elaine Heumann Gurian has served as a senior staff member and senior consultant advisor at a number of museums in this country and abroad. She is president of the Museum Group, an association of senior museum consultants, writes extensively, and lectures on museum studies.