Free museums: BMA's Doreen Bolger

Museum administrators and trustees who like the idea of free admission would do well to pay attention to the Baltimore example. Starting this week, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Walters Art Museum are free. BMA director Doreen Bolger and I talked about how it happened.

MAN: I've read a great deal about how much various entities are kicking in to make the Baltimore Museum of Art (and the Walters Art Museum) free, but how did the whole thing start?

Doreen Bolger: The idea of free admission was being discussed by both institutions independently in 2003. The Walters had board meetings and the BMA was in the process of doing our strategic plan. We identified free admission and greater access in general as a long term goal for the museum. But at that point we couldn't really figure out how to make that happen financially. Admission does not constitute a huge part of our revenue stream, but as an institution that's had a flat budget for eight years, we have to be very careful about each financial decision we make.

Last December the Walters was going to City Hall to discuss funding in general. Free admission came up and the mayor's office said free admission would work best if both museums did it together and right away we began doing advocacy in the city and in [Baltimore] County. Not just with the mayor and the county executive, but with the councils of each jurisdiction. We had tremendous response. Government officials were impressed that we weren’t just asking for more funding, but to fund something that was in the public good. The response was incredible. We just kept going.

MAN: And then one of your board members, Sue Cohen, stepped forward with a $1 million gift to provide for an earmarked endowment.

DB: Even before this began, which is really quite a coincidence, Sue Cohen had given us $1 million last November to fund free admission. Free admission was one of her chief interests. We went into the process knowing we had a start on an endowment to sustain this long-term. I think her incredible philanthropic example will encourage other people to step up to the plate.

MAN: From a revenue point-of-view how did you get your board to embrace this, or was it one of those things that pretty much fell into place once you started discussing it?

DB: If you think about what kind of a business has a financial model like a museum it's pretty difficult to think of one. When you think about our museum, our budget this year is about $12 million, and our endowment is about $65 million. Of course the value of our art collection is inestimable. We couldn't even estimate it if we tried, and at museums we’re careful not to commodify that. But the weightiness of what we hold as cultural heritage assets, the way we play a role is in preserving that for future generations. And when we put it in those terms to some of the participants in the process, they could see that it was sort of ridiculous to have all these treasures and to keep people away by charging admission.

Admissions brought in around $200,000. It was pretty easy to come to the decision that it was a bad business decision to keep people away with something that was only three percent of our budget.

MAN: Did you do any research into how going free would impact your audience, who comes to the museum?

DB: When we saw what the diversity of our audience was when we had free days -- younger people, racial diversity, socioeconomic diversity, the kind of people who came to the museum, especially artists -– we noticed that a lot. And what a great resource this museum is for our artistic community… with MICA here and other institutions throughout the region such as UMBC, Towson University. It's great to see all those people enjoying the collection, sketching in the galleries, walking around.

MAN: What impact will this have on your membership program? It FY 2004 it brought in about $600,000.

DB: It's difficult to project that. That's actually the real risk for us. Members who calculate how much it costs to visit each time they come and who are benefit-sensitive may choose not to renew. But in fact there’s a philanthropic attitude where people think of themselves as partners in the cultural community. We've had many members upgrade to the 'contributor' level -– $250 and above -– in recent years. And there's been enormous growth at this museum in people who give us $1000 and above in the past decade. I think when I came in 1997 there were 66 people (who weren't trustees) who gave $1000 or more. Today there are more than 400. That's where there will be growth. But whether the actual number of members will decline or not time will tell.

In terms of the impact this has on our other funding partners, we've had some very positive responses recently. We just heard on Friday that the Baker Fund at the Baltimore Community Foundation has given us another $75,000 this year toward our expenses for the current year. As soon as the private sector saw the government was being more supportive they wanted to be more involved. There's tremendous momentum behind the plan.

MAN: Some Baltimore institutions are going to be free just in the fall, but you're looking well beyond that, right?

DB: Our plan is to sustain it long term, beyond this three-year period which is transitional. We have a government commitment -- as much as can be assured -- for that. And longer-term we want to have endowment in place to cover that. I'd say it would take about $4-5 million to sustain it long-term.

One thing I think that would be good to emphasize is that each museum has a different model financially. For community museums like ours, the bulk of our visitors are from this region, so you can make a very strong argument for government support of something like this, especially in terms of quality of life and increasing cultural tourism. But in NYC, where you have so many people coming from out of town, you’d have to make a different argument for that to work.

On Sunday there were more people in the museums or in the galleries than there were in the street listening to music or listening to music or eating. We were mobbed. It was as if someone had breathed this enormous source of energy and life into the building. It's like people thought that they couldn't come here before because they hadn't thought of it as their place, or because there was a barrier to entry. And that was gone.