Museums get freedom to charge fees
by John Harlow
Arts Correspondent
(Sunday Times London)


THE ERA of the free museum, the institution venerated by Victorian
philanthropists who established many of the nation's greatest
collections of art and heritage, is over.
A government review into charging for admission at the British Museum
and other national collections is set to conclude that there is no
realistic alternative to entry fees. Government-funded museums will be
told they must offer "free days" but otherwise will be able to
introduce charges as they like.
Galleries seeking lottery funds for restoration or new buildings
claim they have already been quietly "encouraged" by financial
scrutineers from the Heritage Fund and the Arts Council to assume
they will be charging when they reopen.
Many other local museums are introducing charges for the first time,
despite fears of losing up to half their annual visitors, as local
authorities slash their budgets. This trend will be accelerated when
the findings of the review are published early this autumn.
Mark Fisher, the arts minister who ordered the review last month,
will be told by senior civil servants that his department's £200m
museum aid budget would have to increase by at least 20% if entry
fees at government-funded museums were dropped.
He will also be advised that even the minimum goal of finding enough
cash to persuade institutions such as the British Museum not to
introduce admission fees may be beyond the resources of the recently
renamed Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Fisher remains passionately committed to ensuring free access to the
national collections, but political allies suggest that museum policy
is set to follow both education and the health services, which are
being loaded by Labour with "user fees".
"Tony Blair set this hare running last year, when he proclaimed he
was committed to free access to the national heritage, but that did
not mean free all the time," said a Whitehall source last week.
One option, where the government pays charging museums such as the
Victoria and Albert (V&A) to hold free days, would be deeply resented
by institutions such as the National Gallery, which has struggled to
avoid charging but could not share in such largesse unless it
abandoned its principle of free access.
Museums would also be deeply suspicious if the government tried to
use lottery money to pay for such free days because it would mean
such money was replacing part of a core budget.
One senior gallery director said: "Fisher has boxed himself in. There
is no obvious alternative to fees, apart from waffle about marketing
initiatives driving up the overall number of visitors. And we are
doing that already."
The National Gallery says it intends to remain free, no matter what
the Fisher review concludes. But the British Museum, which caused
uproar last year when it revealed it was considering charging £5 a
head to escape a long-term financial crisis, said it would reconsider
entrance fees in the autumn.
Meanwhile, under the influence of trend-setting institutions that
include the Imperial War Museum, which has set up ventures such as HMS
Belfast and the Cabinet War Rooms on the understanding that it can
charge visitors, many municipal museums are abandoning the commitment
to free access.
Earlier this month Merseyside museums trust decided to start charging
visitors £3 because of declining grants. Bury Art Gallery and Museum,
which was prompted by a cash crisis to try to sell its prize
possession, a Turner painting, is "considering" charges. The
Birmingham commission, responsible for eight galleries, said this
weekend it "would not object to a halfway house, such as charging on
some days".
Nearly all new museums charge. The Museum of Garden History, on land
next to the Palace of Lambeth leased from the Church of England, has
"very unhappily" built charging into its lottery bid. So has
Gunnersbury Park Museum in west London.
Curators, who enjoyed a boom in visitors in the 1980s, view the
pressure to charge with despair. One in the Midlands said: "Nearly
half the country's 2,500 main museums are already discouraging casual
visitors with entry fees. If the trend continues, the Sunday family
trip to the local museum will soon be but a memory."

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