Cultural Exchange: Should Museums Charge an Entry Fee?
Which would you rather do: Pay around £15-20 for a special one-off exhibition and have the rest of the museum be free, or pay £5-10 for a general entry fee to the museum which includes the one-off exhibition? Many people would prefer the first option. You can see free art and pay extra for an exhibition if you want to. Although this seems like the ideal way to keep museums accessible for all, I would somewhat disagree. Last year I saw the Cute exhibition at Somerset House, which led me to discover the musician and photographer Hannah Diamond. That discovery also led me to writing about her for this very magazine, and so I probably wouldn’t be writing this piece today. Similarly, the Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition I saw at the Victoria & Albert museum in 2015 changed the way I viewed fashion. Both of these exhibitions were one-off, special exhibitions. I often think back to how lucky I was to be able to see them, since I had to pay to see both of them. What would have happened if I couldn’t afford to see them? Would I still be where I am now? To me, it seems really unfair to have exclusive exhibitions that could potentially shut out low-income visitors. Sure, the rest of the museum is free, but why have selected works available only for people that can afford to pay for them?
In an ideal world, museums and art galleries - including special exhibitions - would be free and subsidised by the government. Unfortunately, the world we live in is far from ideal, and with frequent cuts to arts funding, the idea of every museum completely funded by the government seems outlandish. Over the years, there has been much debate about whether museums should charge for entry to their permanent collections, and the idea was first drafted in the Labour Party manifesto in 1997, and put into place in 2001. However, given the recent cuts to arts funding across the board (council spending on culture and leisure has fallen by £2.3bn since 2010/2011), it puts museums in a tricky situation in which they rely heavily on donations, both from wealthy philanthropists, sponsors and members of the public. According to an article from the Museums Association website by Aurelie Cauchy and Leslie Ramos, the arts only receive 1% of charitable donations and sponsors, and what’s even more depressing is that 65% of these donations are claimed by cultural organisations in London, leaving the rest of the country to essentially fend for itself. Then there is the matter of sponsors having backgrounds that are extremely problematic. From BP’s involvement in places like the National Gallery and the British Museum, to the Sackler family’s ownership of a pharmaceutical company that manufactures the opioid painkiller OxyContin and sponsorship of the Royal Academy and the Serpentine, there’s an awful lot of dirt under the surface of corporate sponsorship. However, a lot of museums still rely on these donations, putting them in a catch-22 situation. In an article for The Standard by Hettie Judah, a spokesperson for the campaign and research group Culture Unstained is quoted as saying that these corporations are using sponsorships to gloss over their harmful practices:
“For unethical corporations such as oil and arms companies, cultural sponsorship is a cheap and effective way of cleaning up their toxic reputations[…]For what is effectively their loose change, these firms buy a social legitimacy they don’t deserve by associating their brands with our trusted museums and galleries. These sponsorship deals have nothing to do with philanthropy — they are a cheap form of advertising, a cost-effective way for unethical industries to boost their image.”
The issue here is the fact that museums can’t really afford to be picky when it comes to corporate sponsors. As I mentioned before, the amount of cuts the arts are facing in the UK makes it clear that museums need corporate sponsorship. In the same article, director and chief executive of The Science Museum Group, Sir Ian Blatchford, argues that free museums fully funded by the government is extreme wishful thinking.
“Museums need more money to thrive. Short sentence, stark truth [...] Museums also need to listen to all their audiences and not only those who make the most noise.”
As much as I want to agree that museums shouldn’t have corporate sponsors, this isn’t going to happen any time soon. However, accepting donations from smaller and more eco-friendly companies, as Kew Gardens is doing, seems to be an ideal step forward. The problem is, what’s to say these companies are also inadvertently contributing to, say, overconsumption? Take Uniqlo for example. A sponsor of Tate Lates until 2020 and Tate Play events in 2025, the company has a reputation for being an ethical yet affordable fashion brand. Yet, according to brand rating site Good On You, they still have quite a way to go when it comes to being completely ethical. So it goes to show that even with smaller brands, it’s still difficult to discern whether their reputation is completely clean, and many museums do not have that luxury.
Another big factor in museum funding is donations from members of the public. A few weeks ago I booked tickets to the Linder and Mickelene Thomas exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. Upon paying for my tickets online (which already cost £20), a £3 donation was added to my basket, which I could only remove at checkout. I also spoke to a family member who recently visited the British Museum, and mentioned they felt obliged to give a donation (which they did). It does seem unfair on the public to feel obligated into giving donations when there are plenty of wealthy donors that could contribute to museum funding. We’ve all had those awkward encounters when buying tickets for an exhibition or something from the gift shop and being asked “would you like to make a donation?” by the cashier, or even the card machine itself - something which, no matter how much I get used to, it will always feel slightly dystopian. I can’t help but think it’s things like this that may contribute to inadvertently keeping people from low-income backgrounds away. But, then again, they could easily be put off visiting museums if museums charged an entry fee, even if that did mean the museum wouldn’t have to rely so much on donations.
A lot of entry fees for well known museums around the world are already extortionate - New York’s Metropolitan museum charges $30 for adults (interestingly, when I visited in 2016 they had a pay-what-you-feel entry fee, which now only seems to be available to New York state residents), and the Louvre costs 17 euros to battle through the crowds to get a quick glimpse of the Mona Lisa (arguably Da Vinci’s least interesting work, but I digress).
It seems there is no straightforward answer to this dilemma. Although part of me is in favour of museums having an entry fee, I would also be really annoyed if museums started charging an entry fee tomorrow. As a student in London, I frequently went to galleries just to sit and look at a single piece of art, and I still do at places like Manchester Art Gallery, and that’s not something I’d be able to do on a regular basis if museums charged for entry. There’s also the fact that those that can’t afford to pay will be shut out completely. In a time where things like the cinema, theatre and live music are becoming increasingly expensive, why make museums inaccessible too? Although they might not be able to see the expensive, special exhibitions, at least they can view the permanent collections multiple times without paying anything. Despite the problematic nature of corporate sponsorship, I still think it’s necessary to have some type of private funding to keep museums free. If it means people can see art and culture for free, then that is more important than ever right now.
Written by Madeleine Atropa
Madeleine Atropa is a freelance artist and writer currently based in the North of England. When she’s not creating chaos in her studio, she can be found wandering around bookshops and art galleries, watching weird films, and playing (then abandoning) video games. You can find her on Instagram @madeleine.atrop.
