Re: Admission fees for special exhibits
A low or non-existent admission encourages visitors to come back
more often, thus increasing the patron count and the retail sales. Most visitors probably won't be able to afford several visits to an exhibition if the admission price is high.

Most museums recognize that stores and food services will benefit from increased attendance, but attention to those ancillary income streams can take away space for programming.  At the new Milwaukee Art Museum you have to go through the store to get to the permanent exhibit galleries.  Even then, the most successful museum stores seldom generate more than $3 per visitor.

It would be interesting to compare the amount of private support received by museums that don't charge admission versus museums that do. Has a study like this ever been conducted?

I don't know of a formal study, but I work with these kinds of numbers all the time in my planning work.  The difficulty is that there is no easy way to compare any two museums, much less a broad category.  Each one has different goals, different circumstances, and widely different programs and activities. Large urban art museums often have a substantial endowment and some city funding coupled to a long-standing mandate to provide free admission. This is why the Met asks for "voluntary" contributions. Museums in NY like the Whitney and MoMA get no subsidy and charge $10 or $12.  MFA Boston does not get a city subsidy and charges $14 for general admission.  They also want $20 to see their current show "Impressionist Still Life."

Museum directors and boards fully understand that every dollar increase in admission fee results in a reduction in attendance and especially disenfranchises those with little money. But it comes down to the old saw about the greatest good for the greatest number.  The income allows the museum to share an exhibit it could not otherwise mount.  If the museum did not mount the exhibit, the only people who would see it would be those who could afford to travel to another city.  That would certainly disenfranchise even more people than the higher admission price.

We all agree (I think) that all museums should be free. We also know what people are willing to pay to go to a movie or to an amusement park or to DisneyLand.  We need to be responsible about what we charge (and $34 to visit the MFA does seem outrageous), but we also need to be able to get people to support and value our work.  Finding the right balance is never easy, but sometimes admission fees are the best way to gain that support.


  
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Guy Hermann
8 1/2 Godfrey Street
Mystic, CT 06355

home: 860-536-2994
cell: 860-857-7363

   
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