Would It Help If Museums Were Free?

http://www.citylab.com/navigator/2016/09/why-free-museums-matter/501386/?utm_source=nl_link1_092316

Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles, California
en.wikipedia.org

Hello Everyone:

Winter vacation is upon us and it is time for getting together with family or just going off on your own.  If you are like yours truly, you tend to prefer solitary activities.  One of Blogger's favorite solo adventures is a trip to the museum.  Naturally.  However unless you are a member of a museum, the cost of admission can be prohibitive.  When you factor in a trip to the snack bar and the bookstore, that nice trip to the museum can be almost as much as a trip to the movie theater.  Consider this, what if admission to your favorite museum was free?  This is the subject that Jessica Leigh Hester ponders in her CityLab article "Why Free Museums Matter."  Ms. Hester's thesis is that free admission to museums would help remove their aura of exclusivity.  Ms. Hester lovingly describes her own experience of attending a retrospective of the work of J.M.W. Turner, James Whistler, and Claude Monet.  Theoretically, museums are for the public to come and spend time communing with great works of art.  Museums also need to be a reflection of the community they serve.  Further, they need to reach a larger audience that cannot come in person for various reasons.  However, cultural institutions in the United States are trying out unique solutions to remedy the issues of accessibility.  

Smithsonian National African American History and Culture Museum
Washington D.C,
news desk.si.edu

In an effort to generate more excitement  and passionate relationships between artwork and its audience, over 1,200 museum annually open their doors, once a year, as part of Smithsonian Museum Day Live.  Institutions from coast to coast offer free tickets for one applicant and one guest, reserved in advance.  Ms. Hester writes, "Museum Day is just one prong of an ongoing campaign to chip away at the stigma that museums belong to some of the people, and others."  Many cultural institutions are struggle to shed the veneer of inscrutability and preconception that visitors should possess specific knowledge in order to gain entry into this rarefied world.

The Whitney Museum new building
New York City, New York
whitney.org

At the dedication of the new Whitney Museum in 2015, First Lady of The United States Michelle Obama spoke on the ambivalence of accessing cultural spaces is split along racial and socio-economic lines.  Data from the American Association of Museums reveals that, nationally, "only 9 percent of visitors are minorities."  Essentially, non-Caucasian visitors, Mrs. Obama said, may feel particularly uncomfortable standing beneath marble atriums:

You see, there are so many kids in this country who look at places like museums and concert halls and other cultural centers and they think to themselves, well, that's not a place for me, for someone who looks like me, for someone who comes from my neighborhood.  In fact, I guarantee you right now, there are kids living less than a mile from here who would never in a million years dream that they would be welcome in this museum.  And growing up on the South Side of Chicago, I was one of those kids myself.

The de Young Museum
San Francisco, California
sfstation.com

Equal access to museum collections is of great importance as museum visits become less frequent for school children,  Ms. Hester reports, "As strapped school systems work to adhere to curriculum requirements amid budgets with little wiggle room,"

the museum trip, once a feature of every New York City student's experience is becoming endangered,

Kim Kanatani, the director of education at the Guggenheim Museum told The New York Times.

Ms. Kanatani related to The Times that she and her co-workers noted a drop in school tours booked throughout the city.  This pattern was also noted in other parts of the country.  Case in point, in the 2010-11 school year, half the U.S. schools eliminated field trips according to a survey by the American Association of School Administrators.

The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Bentonville, Arkansas
en.wikipedia.org

The Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas found a solution to this troubling trend.  When spaces for museum school tours do become available, the demand often outweighs supply.  When The Museum opened in 2011, an endowment enabled it to operate school tours for free.  The response was overwhelming, 525 schools applied for a free tour, in hopes of bringing more than 38,000 students-more than The Museum was able to accommodate.

Jessica Leigh Hesters notes, "Free entry isn't a cure-all.  Slicing the price of admission, for instance, doesn't solve the problems that spring from limited transit options or crunched schedules that don't allow much meandering."  Blogger has experienced those issues in the past.  To solve these problems, museums have taken their collections on the road.  Under the direction of a $2 million grant from the Knight Foundation, the Detroit Institute of exhibits replicas of works in their collection throughout Michigan communities,  This past summer, seven of those works were on view at public libraries and parks in the Orion Township.  There are similar programs in Miami and Philadelphia.

Detroit Institute of Arts
Detroit, Michigan
content.time.com

Another solution to the time and lack of transit option problem is leveraging a museum's digital footprint.  Other institutions are using their online presence to connect with audiences who cannot come to the museum in person.  For example, "Kimberly Drew, the social media manager at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who also runs the buzz worthy Tumblr Black Contemporary Art, has grown the behemoth institution's online presence and turned up the volume about gaps in the museum's collection."  The result is an extended conversation that engages patrons across the digital universe.  Ms. Drew told Lenny,

Only a third of our Facebook likes are from people in the United States, and even a smaller percentage is in New York...Our community is not geo-specific,  It's built around language that's inclusive.

Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois
artic.edu

Some doubt that free museum admission is the only and or effective solution to increasing attendance.  There is concern that reducing the price of admission will eventually lead to a diminishing bottom line.  Ms. Hastings writes, "However,, one museum director told Fortune that a typical institution only pockets about 4 percent of its yearly revenue from admissions-larger chunks come from endowments and fundraising."  Last year, about a third of the institutions in the American Alliance of Museum Directors offered free admission and about 5 percent listed suggested rates.

Free admission does work.  Museums that altered their admissions policies noted a change in visitor patterns.  "Attendance doubled after fees were waived to England's national collections in 2001, reported the director of London's Natural History Museum to The Guardian."  When the Dallas Museum of Art eliminated its $10 admission fee, annual attendance grew from 498,000 to 668,000 and the museum saw a 29 percent uptick in minority visitors, reported Fortune.

In one respect, museum are static: permanent collection are not in a chaotic state of flux and the history they present spans the millennia.  Art, in all of its glorious genres, is a moment in time as seen by the people who lived in cultures committed to canvas, stone, paper, clay, or photograph.  In the digital age, museums are increasing their accessibility via the social media.  Their Instagram feeds regularly feature images from their collections with ample opportunity for comment.  Museum Twitter feeds allow patrons to decide on the contents of crowd-sourced exhibitions.  The point here is the social media allows for a more inclusive conversation.  Free admission is a good start, greater online presence is another way to make museums more accessible to all.