You Want "Free" Museums? Then Show Me The Money!

Recently the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced it was changing its entrance fee policies.

And immediately a torrent of outrage and pearl-clutching was unleashed into the Internet echo chamber by museum workers and art critics and culture supporters of all stripes. Basically, the social media grousing was about equally divided between those who said "all museums should be free!" and folks who characterized the people running The Met as heartless philistines (or worse!)

In an ideal world, every museum would be open to all, and not charge any admissions fees.  I am with you there 100%.  But how do we make that happen in a practical, and sustainable, way?

In the real world, somebody (or some entity) pays for free admissions policies --- and that usually boils down to rich people and/or governments giving money to museums. That money almost always has various strings attached, and not every museum has access to the recurring rich people's money and/or government funding to make that happen.

In places where most of the museums are "free" (like Washington D.C. or St. Louis, for example) taxes or voter-approved funding structures pave the way for "free" admission.  Somebody is still paying to keep the museum running, but not through the direct contributions of visitors through the door.

I understand The Met is an easy target for outrage (for lots of reasons beyond admissions policies) but let's looks at some numbers:

• Recent articles indicate that only 17 percent of Met visitors pay the full suggested admission of $25; the average person pays $9.  So let's just set aside the egalitarian notion of "suggested admissions" or "pay what you can" policies.  There are people visiting The Met who can pay more to get in, and choose not to.  If The Met wants to make it harder for rich tourists to cheap out on paying their fair share to see the Museum, I say go for it!  (The real question is how to provide universal museum access for the truly needy, not just thrifty yuppies.)

• How much would it actually cost to make up the "lost" admission revenue at The Met annually if there were no admission charge?  Recent attendance figures at The Met topped 6.7 million visitors.
So if you multiply that by the suggested admission fee of $25 you get a figure of over 167 million dollars annually. More than the 148 million dollars annual budget of the National Endowment of the Arts.  For just one museum! And that doesn't even take into account the Association of Art Museum Directors 2016 report findings that show the actual average cost of serving art museum visitors is closer to $55 per person. So museums are already subsidizing the costs of visitation in most cases.

• Beyond admissions prices and policies, does no-cost museum entry really provide the sort of universal access we would hope for?  Check out this blog post by Colleen Dilenschneider for some data and links regarding that very question. (Spoiler alert: free admission is far from the engagement cure-all that some of its supporters believe it is.)

So while I understand, on an emotional level, the pissed-off people shouting slogans or comparing The Met to Marie Antoinette on the Web, I'm afraid that alone isn't going to change the crappy, unsustainable business models of cultural institutions. 

I think our challenges to improve museum access can be both "big picture" (using the example of the funding structure of public libraries as a good starting point for political action and advocacy) and "intensely local" (what is one way we as museum workers can help a local museum to increase its access to all people?)

Those sorts of efforts might not provide the noisy, immediate gratification of social media posts about free admission policies but I think they can create longer-term impacts for both our museums and our communities.

What do you think?  Let us know in the "Comments" section below.


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Google Field Trip and "Free" Museums

Should all museums be "free"?  That is, charge no admission to anyone who shows up at the front door?  (And I don't mean the slightly bogus "pay what you wish" policy that many museums employ... that's still really intimidating for many "novice" museum goers.)

I've been thinking about this a lot as I am visiting many, many museums during a West Coast trip.  Usually a combination of my AAM card and/or my business card and/or turning on the 150 watt charm gets me into the particular museum for free.  Not always, but the vast majority of the time. But that works for me, not just anyone who shows up at the front desk.

I recently downloaded an app called Google Field Trip onto my iPhone.  It uses your location to suggest nearby cultural or historical or theatrical attractions that you might like to visit or explore.  As a bonus,  Google has partnered with some museums (mostly right now on the East and West Coasts) to offer free admission to the highlighted venue.   So this weekend as I was ambling aroung Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, my iPhone pinged me to let me know that I was near the de Young Art Museum and could get free admission there by showing the front desk staff my Google Field Trip screen.  Cool right? Who doesn't like free stuff?

Inevitably friends or neighbors who know I work in the museum business will say, "I love it that all the Smithsonian Museums in Washington DC are free."  Of course, I explain they're not really free since our taxes help to support the Smithsonian, but to most non-museum people it still shakes down the same way --- they think museums cost too much, and they would prefer (and practically expect) that museums should charge no admission.

Elaine Gurian has made a passionate case for free museum admission (you can check out her thoughts on her website.)  Her basic premise (which I agree wholeheartedly with) is that free museum admission will build broader and more diversified museum use.

On the other hand, it costs money to run and staff museums, so where will that "missed" admissions revenue be made up?  Jamie Glavic of the Museum Minute blog has written an equally passionate post defending the 9/11 Memorial Museum's decision to charge admission.

It's tricky isn't it?  The Web and smart phones and streaming technologies have given us an expectation that we can latch onto any kind of content for free, whenever and wherever we like.  Does that mean that museums should become "free" also?


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The Museum Fiscal Cliff?

The incessant drum beat about "The Fiscal Cliff" coming out of Washington coupled with news that the Dallas Museum of Art will eliminate its admission fees (as outlined in this excellent LA Times article) got me thinking again about the economic future of museums.

Museums, maybe even more than other non-profits and cultural institutions, seem happy to play the Blanche DuBois card and "depend on the kindness of strangers."  Unfortunately for museums, relying on tax-leveraged donations or corporate/philanthropic largesse, presents some fundamental challenges to a sustainable future.  Here are two large practical issues looming on the edge of a potential museum fiscal cliff:


• Demographics: The fine folks at Reach Advisors have pointed out again and again the practical demographic issues facing museums. (See this post for instance.)  Put simply, museum visitors (paying or otherwise) tend to be older and whiter than the current population at large, and the future demographic trends for the U.S. as well.

Leaving the very real concern of visitor demographics aside, why can't museums make a go of it on pure admission numbers alone?  As the AAM has reported:

There are approximately 850 million visits each year to American museums, more than the attendance for all major league sporting events and theme parks combined (471 million).

If we really have this volume of annual visitors, why are museums constantly rattling their begging cups?

 
• Marketing Gimmicks:  Museums have become great at selling the "sizzle" (marketing hype) instead of the "steak" (their core collections and activities.)  It really has become one step above professional wrestling marketing techniques in some cases.  If some museum professionals feel they need to "trick" people into visiting their institutions, are they really in the right business?

As writer Christopher Knight aptly notes in the same LA Times article mentioned above, many museums have coupled these carny come-ons to membership incentives as well:
 

Fundamentally, it means expanding the museum's membership. The usual method for that is pretty degraded: Program the museum with lightweight entertainments to appeal to audiences with no interest in art, and then offer discounted admission to new members who otherwise wouldn't dream of dropping 10 bucks -- or $40, $60 or more if the whole family comes along -- to see a beautiful 10th century Indian sandstone carving of Vishnu or a fine 1919 Cubist still life by Picasso in the permanent collection.

Hucksterism is the common term for the usual member's discount, with art regarded as P.T. Barnum's Fiji mermaid and visitors urged to step right this way to check out the egress. The gambit mostly creates churn: An attendance surge is followed by a drop, until the next high calorie/low nutrition program juices the numbers again.

So, what's the real "value proposition"for museums?  What are the museum experiences that will draw a majority of folks from the local communities?  I'd argue that that the strongest draw that museums still have (over every other type of media) is their "stories and stuff."  The opportunity to engage with amazing physical (not virtual) objects and compelling narratives in a communal, social environment is what museums should be selling if they want to avoid their own "fiscal cliff."

I applaud directors like Maxwell Anderson who are decoupling from the old-style "entitlement program" funding model most U.S. museums work under.  It's really a return to the fundamentals of the museum value proposition --- "we have amazing stuff we'd like to share with you."

What do you think?  Is your museum facing its own fiscal cliff(s)? Should museums jettison their old-school admissions and funding models?  Leave your thoughts in the "Comments" Section below!



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The Super Bowl vs. Your Museum

Super Bowl Sunday will be a great day to visit your local museum --- because it will be even quieter than usual.  This, despite the oft-repeated statistic that "140 million people will attend major league sporting events in a year, compared to 850 million museum visitations in the United States."

First off, in keeping with the Super Bowl theme of this posting, let me just ask whether you've ever seen someone outside a museum scalping tickets to get inside?  Leaving aside the fact that the comparative statistic above is misleading for a number of reasons, if not downright bogus --- but let's move on.

So why are so many people, even folks who don't normally follow football, more rabidly enthusiastic about watching the "Big Game" or attending a local Super Bowl event, than visiting your museum?

I'd say one possible answer lies in finding the difference between a "fan" and a "casual visitor."   Fans wear logo gear all year long, and have no compunction in excitedly telling total strangers how great their team is.  The National Football league is, as a recent New York Times Magazine article has detailed, even going after a traditionally neglected demographic, women 18 to 49, with great success.

Most museums, however, seem unable to expand beyond their traditional visitor demographic of older, white adults.

So how can museums create more "fans" and expand their demographic reach as well?  

One positive example is the Brooklyn Museum's 1stfans program which is billed as "a socially networked museum membership" that gives special benefits to anyone who becomes a 1stfan. Despite being in the shadow of their over-hyped museum brethren in Manhattan, the Brooklyn Museum has decided to deliberately and aggressively become more responsive to the various communities it serves --- and in the process has been creating Brooklyn Museum fans.

Similarly, places like The City Museum in St. Louis have set out to become a gathering spot for their local communities and have become open to all sorts of fun ideas that are edgy enough to attract a wide, and enthusiastic,  audience of repeat visitors who definitely become City Museum fans.


Of course all this talk of creating "museum fans" is pointless if your museum isn't really fan-worthy.  Is your admissions procedure torture?  Do your create core exhibits and attractions that are worth revisiting, or do you depend on the hucksterism of one-off events that only vaguely relate to your museum's mission and purpose?  What are the obstacles that prevent your visitors from becoming fans?


So, let's take a few lessons from the NFL and see if we can create more museum fans.   And if we can't beat them at the Super Bowl hoopla, maybe we can take a page from Tyler Greens's playbook by stirring up an Art Museum Super Bowl bet, and giving football fans another reason to be interested in what we do.


GO MUSEUMS!



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Museum Design: Just Let Me In!

When does a museum visit start? Some people might say, "after I pay my admission and enter the exhibit galleries."

However, there are two initial points of contact that come earlier for most visitors: your museum website and your admissions area.

Put yourself in your visitor's shoes and consider what are the simplest ways to complete the desired informational transactions? Are you making pretty nested webpages and slick (but slow-loading) Flash animations that are impossible to click past when most visitors just want hours, admissions, and directions?

Similarly, do your admissions prices, levels, and options make for quick and simple transactions, or just frustrate and annoy visitors, especially first-time visitors?

The American Museum of Natural History in New York City is the all-time champ for confusing admissions prices and options, not to mention a crazily ineffective computer-based admissions system. For example, half of the computer terminals at one of their admissions areas are only for non-member transactions. So even if everyone in line is a member, three admissions personnel (on average) just stare into space or repeatedly tell annoyed members that "this computer is only for non-members."

Also, members are supposed to receive free admission to special exhibitions --- except when the museum makes exceptions and charges extra for special exhibitions. Does this make for great customer satisfaction? Not in my case! After repeatedly running the AMNH admissions gantlet, I gave up and canceled my family membership!

So think about the "visit" that starts before your visitors start enjoying the first of your exhibit spaces.