
How Much Should the Met Cost? - diodorus
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/05/30/how-much-should-the-met-cost-you/
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syphilis2
In my experience the impact from mandatory museum fees is that people will not
make short museum visits. A single new exhibit is not worth $25, nor is a 1
hour visit after lunch or before dinner. When there's a large cost visiting
the museum becomes an event, something that gets planned into the day's
schedule for many hours. I'm curious to see if the fees have any impact on the
number of out of town visitors.

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_ph_
A good solution would be affordable long time tickets. Why not a yearlong
ticket for $50? I don’t think the revenue would be less than with single
tickets but take away all pressure of making the best out of the ticket.

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doron
Its called a membership and most museums offer them.

In most cases it is about 3 times the price of a regular one time ticket and
gives you unlimited access to the museum as well as discounts in the stores,
early access to exhibitions etc...

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abrowne
The Minneapolis Institute of Art is free (except special exhibits). I'm a
paying member, but it's great that it's free, both for those who can't pay,
but also because it means you don't have to spend a huge amount of time there
to feel like it justifies the ticket price. I used to live nearby and would
sometimes walk over to look at one piece for 5 minutes.

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ulysses
Very interesting article.

I recently visited New York and spent a day at the Met. As a tech-employed
American who can afford to do things like fly to New York for a week, $25
dollars seemed like an amazing deal. An unbelievable deal, really. $25 there
and $25 at MOMA didn't really register against the overall expense of the
trip.

They still have pay-what-you-can for people who live in New York or within a
certain distance thereof.

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teachrdan
I visited the Met a number of times as a broke college student from Ohio, and
a number of times after graduating when I lived in the SF Bay Area but was
still broke. The fact that I could go up to the ticket counter, pay a nominal
$1 donation, and get the same metal tab button to get in as everyone else was
a godsend.

I love New York City, but every time I go back to visit it feels more like a
playground for the wealthy.

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JBReefer
I live near the Met, and go frequently. Other articles, but not this one,
mention another huge reason: the fact that the Met is effectively free has
lead to crazy overcrowding.

Tour buses line up on 5th Ave, people are pushy, lines are hours long, etc.
It's an incredible place, but sometimes it feels like the fact that it's free
means that people treat it like it's cheap. It turns into the default thing to
do, which to me feels like it devalues one of the greatest institutions on the
planet.

I'm a member at MoMA, and it's a totally different situation - it's quieter,
people are more respectful, and it's a lot less crowded. I'm sure the fact
that MoMA is non-negotiably $25.

Pro-tip: If you're in New York, on your first day buy a MoMA membership, and
the next morning go to Member Hours (you can't buy a membership during Member
Hours). Being in the Warhol room alone is a remarkable experience.

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Jun8
"To be ideological is to preconceive reality." Indeed! In his fervor to
picture the Met as a racist, elitist, outdated bastion of high art the author
does not care to spend any verbiage on the real problem: the Met's inaptitude
for money. While mentioning a constant beat about money troubles he doesn't
really talk about _what_ is causing these, except mentioning number of
visitors has doubled.

Leaving that aside, as one data point I wanted to compare Met's membership
rates for two adults with those of Chicago's Art Institute, of which we are
members: $105 for the Art Institute, $100 for the Met. And the Institute,
while great, is no Met!

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thesimon
>or they charge a king’s ransom to see the work on their walls, like the
Louvre (seventeen euros)

Partially true, European visitors under 25 years get free access.

As a not-so-rich-student this is what made me visit the Louvre. I'm not an
arts student and didn't really know what to expect from an art museum, so this
is what made me visit the Louvre on a recent layover. If I had to pay, I
probably wouldn't have visited it, as I expected to not get the money worth in
the 2-3 hours I had. I'm guessing others feel this way as well.

$25 seems like a good filter for very interested visitors though.

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stevewillows
Even charging tourists at a mere $5 would exceed their $10m needs.

To contrast the pricing, The Vancouver Art Gallery charges $24 (membership for
$90.) More often than not, I leave disappointed with the overall experience.
That being said, they have expenses, and its not like I'm going several times
per month.

If we could have the quality of the Met in Vancouver, I'd gladly pay $25+ per
visit.

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ghaff
I actually find the new policy more honest in some ways. Because of the way
admission was set up (you had to go up to the cashier and get a little clip-on
thingie), it always felt like the donation was optional but not really. And
the museum certainly didn't go out of its way to advertise that you didn't
have to pay the printed amount.

London museums are also a bit guilty of trumpeting "Free" and then expecting a
donation. But the suggested amount is more modest and the collection is just a
box/globe so it's very low-key.

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tomcam
The Met is one of the world’s great museums. It is easily worth $25. As a
student of art history in Southern California I simply did not understand the
appeal of certain artworks until I saw them at the Met, where I was moved to
tears several times. It turned out that I simply hadn’t been able to
experience first-rate collections where I lived.

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thoughtexprmnt
I was visiting Baltimore's Inner Harbor recently with my wife and our two
kids. With a couple of hours available, we thought we'd checkout the aquarium.
Then we learned our 4 tickets would cost $130 ($40/adult, $25/child), so we
found something else to do instead.

I know an aquarium is not an art museum, but still...

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ghaff
Aquariums tend to be pretty expensive. Those types of rates are about par for
the course. I assume that operating costs are high.

