About a week ago The Art Newspaper had an article on the debate about free admission at US museums.
There are a lot of factors discussed but one of the things that caught my eye was the suggestion that free admission alone isn’t necessarily going to increase attendance and participation, there has to be a change in the programming to align with the interests of the audiences you are trying to reach.
The piece opens with the example of Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum and Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) which eliminated their admission fees around the same time.
[Walters] decision to eliminate admissions in 2006 led to an increase in attendance “by 45%, and minority participation went up by a factor of three”, but still that greater influx of traffic did not pay for itself. People came for free but did not spend more while there.
…the long-term results have not been positive overall for either museum. After the first year or so of increased attendance when entry became free, the number of visitors declined at both institutions, by 18.6% at the Walters and 12.7% percent at the BMA, according to a 2021 survey.
A little later the article mentions Walters collection
….are of ancient objects from the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, as well as medieval and pre-20th century European art, which appeal to somewhat specialised tastes and unsurprisingly might not be an obvious draw in Baltimore, a city that has lost a third of its population since 1950 and currently is almost 63% African American
It goes on to mention that BMA recognized the community has changed and controversially sold off some of their collection to purchase works by “under-represented, non-white and African American artists.”
They compare that with Detroit Institute of Arts which eliminated admission for residents of the surrounding three counties in exchange for a share of property taxes to support their operation. They pretty quickly changed their programming mix and the visitor experience to meet the expectations of a fuller range of whose taxes they were now receiving:
As part of the DIA’s elimination of its admissions fees, the museum made notable changes in its displays and programming. A department of African American art was created, and a reinstallation of art placed a greater emphasis on contemporary art. According to Timothy Chester, the former director of the Grand Rapids Public Museum and currently a museum consultant, “the DIA added a variety of interpretive signage and interactive tools to help make installations more relevant to diverse audiences. Critics accused the institution of ‘dumbing down’ the museum, but such criticism quickly faded.”
