NATION Museum entrance fees keep going up

Elsewhere around the world, governments heavily subsidize museums.
By JANE ENGLE
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Prices at U.S. museums, those guardians of civilization, are getting downright uncivilized. It's not just that regular entrance fees are edging up, it's the extra charges: upward of $20 per person for special exhibits on Impressionists, antiquities and other blockbuster subjects.
Sometimes it seems the treasure I've deposited at the museum's box office rivals what's on the exhibit shelves -- and never more so since I journeyed to Hong Kong and Singapore last month, where the exquisite museums I visited charged less than $2 per person.
What's wrong with this picture? Quite a bit, it turns out.
In the past few years and especially since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, "museums' costs have been continuing to skyrocket, and every source of support has suffered dramatic decline," says Edward H. Able Jr., president and chief executive of the Washington, D.C.-based American Association of Museums.
To ease the budget squeeze, many of the United States' estimated 16,000 art, history and other museums, including zoos, have raised entrance fees -- perhaps by 50 percent or more on average since 1999, according to the results from questionnaires that Able's group sent to 5,000 museums.
It's not just locals who feel the pain; it's tourists, too. Next to shopping and outdoor activities, museums and historical sites are among the top reasons people travel, according to surveys by the Travel Industry Association of America.
Reasons for the rise
The causes of the increasing fees are numerous. Take government funding. If you can find any.
At New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, only 14 percent of 2002 operating income came from the city -- and nearly half of that went to pay utility bills. Major sources for the rest included the museum's endowment, private donations, memberships (14 percent) and admissions (10 percent).
At the New Orleans Museum of Art, local, state and federal money typically covers about one-fourth of the operating costs, with the balance from private sources, says director E. John Bullard.
Even the Smithsonian Institution, probably the best-known government-funded museum organization in America, took only three-fourths of its 2002 budget from public coffers. The balance came mostly from private donations, investment earnings and business ventures. (Its 16 museums do not charge for admission.)
Outside the United States
By contrast, in 2001 in Singapore, the affluent island nation of 4.6 million off the Malay Peninsula, the government funded more than 90 percent of the budget of the National Heritage Board, which oversees museums.
Many European museums also are heavily financed by government. Many in London, an otherwise pricey city to visit, don't charge admission.
But public support of museums in the United States has been sliding. Exact figures are hard to pin down. But in 1989, governments financed nearly 40 percent of budgets, on average, of museums polled by the American Association of Museums. Last year, the figure was a little more than 25 percent.
The current average is even lower, many think, given the recent collapse of state and local budgets, the main sources of public money for museums. (The federal government provides a "pittance," in Able's view -- actually about one-fourth from all government sources, according to his group's poll.)
Other revenue-erasing trends in the past several years are precipitous drops in private donations, investment income and foreign visitors to the United States -- the first two driven by the long economic recession.
Digging out isn't easy.
Special exhibitions
The cost of mounting and transporting special exhibitions, Able says, has in some cases quadrupled since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Among the expenses are higher insurance for traveling collections; new air security and fuel surcharges; and extra personnel hired, amid airline staff cutbacks, to supervise moves.
Lending museums are getting more savvy, too, according to Bullard. The "participation fee," which covers little more than the right to exhibit a traveling collection, cost his museum $50,000 for the King Tut exhibit 25 years ago, compared with $1 million for this month's "Quest for Immortality" Egyptian show, he says.
Admission fees have increased significantly. At the New Orleans museum, they were $1 per adult 25 years ago, with no extra charge for the special exhibit. Now they are $6 for regular admission, $17 for the show. (And the city of New Orleans, anticipating a tourism boost, is picking up the $1 million tab.)
So special exhibits, despite high costs, become a "wonderful opportunity" for the museum to generate income, raise its profile and gain members, Bullard says -- even as he worries that rising entrance fees may drive down attendance. He calls it the "blockbuster merry-go-round" that many museums ride to survive.
Some deals
Others, among them the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, eschew special exhibit fees while charging a bit more for regular entrance. The New York museum asks for a $12 "suggested" donation for adults.
You don't have to go to Singapore or Hong Kong to find inexpensive museums. More than one-third of the museums in the American Association of Museums' latest poll don't charge for admission, and more than two-thirds have free days. It pays to call or check Web sites before a visit. And despite typically higher prices in big cities, the average nonmember fee in the poll was $5 -- not bad compared with the price of movies, pro sports and concerts.
At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which recently increased its regular adult admission to $9 from $7, you can go free from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Fridays and 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. other days (except Wednesdays, when it's closed). Unless you want to see a special exhibit. Its latest blockbuster, "Old Masters, Impressionists, and Moderns," which closed Monday, cost $17 weekdays, $20 weekends, plus $6 for an audio tour.
I guess we'd better get used to that. Or resolve to provide more public funding for the arts.