The Sunday New York Times has an extended story on the Museum of Modern Art, and their recently announced entry price increase from $12 to $20 when they open their new facility. The price would make MoMA ‘the most expensive major art museum in the United States.’
The article is fairly balanced in its exploration of the increase, noting the challenge a price increase would create for enabling broad access to the collection, as well as the MoMA staff’s agony over the change. There’s a weird tangent about how museum fee inflation has ‘outpaced the price increases for nearly every other form of entertainment in recent years,’ listing the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and compact discs as comparables.
MoMA director Glenn Lowry suggests that the price bump is the only revenue stream available for significant growth:
‘There are very few elements of a museum’s budget that have any tweak to them,’ Mr. Lowry said on a recent afternoon, sitting in his small interior office on Sixth Avenue. ‘You’re already raising $30 million in gifts. O.K., maybe you can raise $31 million, but you’re not going to raise $35 million. And maybe you can tweak a little extra out of the museum’s costs.’
Of course, the leadership and staff may have seen the problem coming, as they drew up plans for their new facility that would cost significantly more to heat, light, staff, clean, and manage (leaving a budget hole of about $20 million).
General reaction to the price increase has been shock and awe…from other museum managers (secretly grateful that someone else took the first step) to New York residents. The Daily News went so far as to suggest that MoMA should now stand for ‘More Of your Money for Art.’ The New York Post headline screamed out ‘$20 MOMA ADMISSION WILL GIVE YOU ART ATTACK.’
Let’s see how soon the other major museums take MoMA’s lead…
