Free for All

More midsize museums are eliminating admission fees

Gary Vikan, director of the Walters Art Museum, in Baltimore, sometimes slips away from his office to

observe the stream of visitors tramping into the museum lobby. While it’s natural for a museum leader to enjoy the sight of patrons coming to see the collections, lately Mr. Vikan likes to watch what they are not doing: Nobody pays an admission fee to visit anymore.

Last October, the Walters, along with the Baltimore Museum of Art, eliminated the $10 admission fee they had previously charged adults who wanted see their permanent exhibits.

“This was an act of mission and values, not an act of money,” Mr. Vikan says.

Attracting New Visitors

The Baltimore museums join art museums in Cincinnati, Houston, Kansas City, Mo., and elsewhere that have all dropped their admission fees within the past few years. The Indianapolis Museum of Art eliminated admission fees in January.

To varying degrees, all have experienced a swell of new and more-diverse visitors. Attendance at the Walters, which is counted at the door by security personnel, has grown by 50 percent since admission became free, and the visitors are increasingly diverse: Three times as many black patrons and four times as many children are coming since the fees were dropped, according to informal visitor surveys.

“I really enjoy seeing all the new faces,” Mr. Vikan says of the change he’s noticed since October. “Our visitors are really starting to reflect the community.”

But the move presents fund-raising challenges, since the institutions must find ways to make up the revenue that admission fees once provided. The decision can also alienate people who pay an annual fee to join the institution, since typically the main membership benefit is free access throughout the year. Eliminating admission fees can also add new security and housekeeping costs.

The Baltimore museums have collectively lost around $400,000 a year in admissions revenue, though they have secured grants that enable them to offer free admission through 2009. Both institutions are working to raise $5-million each for an endowment to make free admissions permanent.

“What is important to remember is that there is no such thing as a free lunch,” cautions Doreen Bolger, director of the Baltimore Museum of Art, where attendance has risen 15 percent since the museum dropped its admissions fee. “Someone has to pay the bills for these institutions, and each has to look at the situation in its own city and make decisions.”

Government Aid

Like many art museums in the United States, both the Walters and the Baltimore Museum of Art began as philanthropic efforts started by wealthy, art-loving citizens. The Walters typically features art from the 19th century or earlier, while the Baltimore Museum of Art’s comprehensive collection includes ancient and modern works.

As the museums grew from small collections into mature institutions, they could no longer count solely on their endowments and private donations, so they sought government aid. Until 1982, they received enough from government and private sources to keep admission free. But as costs rose and government funds failed to keep pace, the institutions imposed their first admission fees.

Museums around the country have faced such challenges as government aid plays an increasingly smaller role in their finances. Government grants accounted for 24 percent of the revenue at museums in 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available, compared with 39 percent in 1989, according to the American Association of Museums.

Mr. Vikan, who became director of the Walters in 1992 after serving seven years as an assistant director, admits that while the museum was periodically raising its admission charges, he always felt that going free “was the right thing to do.”

In the late 1990s, he began examining how other museums had dropped admission fees, including the Minneapolis Museum of Art, which went free in 1988, and, later, the experiences in Britain, where the government dropped admission fees to government-run museums in 2001. Increased attendance was the outcome in every instance.

“It changes the museum’s relationship with the community,” Mr. Vikan says.

When he first proposed making the Walters free in 2003, some staff members expressed concern, as did some trustees. They said they feared that, given the museum’s location in downtown Baltimore, the free admission could mean that street people and others might start coming to the museum just to use the bathrooms or to sleep in the galleries.

The board, however, ultimately voted to make free admission a goal for the museum. The idea got some momentum when the board chair championed the idea of going free as a “legacy” to set in motion before leaving the position, Mr. Vikan says.

Across town, similar discussions were occurring at the Baltimore Museum of Art, where “greater community accessibility” emerged as a key goal for the institution following a series of strategic-planning sessions begun in 2001.

“The idea really began with the trustees, who were passionate about the idea of free admission,” Ms. Bolger says.

In 2003, Mr. Vikan approached the Baltimore Museum of Art, which is just a few miles away, about working together on the goal of going free.

“It just wouldn’t be right if one museum did it and another did not — it would undercut and destabilize our relationship,” he says.

At both institutions, revenue from admissions accounted for only 2 percent of income, or $200,000 a year. On average at American art museums, admission revenue accounts for 5 percent of income, according to the museum association, but at some large institutions, such as the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, admission fees can account for 12 percent of income or more.

The Baltimore museums decided to seek grants as a team to cover the lost revenue for a few years until they could raise enough money to make free admissions permanent.

By 2005 the outlook for seeking increased government funds to help pay temporarily for free admission had improved, since Baltimore City was running a budget surplus thanks to taxes and fees from a surging real-estate market.

Working together, the two institutions secured a $400,000 commitment from the city. An additional $460,000 came from county governments surrounding the city. Mr. Vikan recalls that most government officials were receptive to the idea of helping to make the region’s two largest art museums more accessible.

“They said it was great when someone comes asking for more money not because they are desperate or going broke, but because they want to offer more services,” Mr. Vikan says.

Local foundations responded as well, with a combined $240,000 coming from the Joseph and Harvey Meyerhoff Family Charitable Funds and the T. Rowe Price Associates Foundation, among others.

Last October, when the two museums swung their doors open free for the first time in more than 20 years, the Baltimore City Office of Promotion and the Arts offered grants to other arts and cultural organizations, including small local theaters and the Baltimore zoo, allowing them to offer free events during October and November in a now-annual event called “Free Fall Baltimore.”

“Instead of just being the two of us going free, we had a wonderful citywide celebration,” Ms. Bolger says.

‘Inspired to Give’

The Baltimore Museum of Art has already raised $1.5-million toward the $5-million it says it needs to build an endowment that can permanently offset admission fees. Of the money, $1-million came from one donor: Susan Cohen, a local philanthropist and museum board member, who gave the money in 2005.

“Free admissions resonates with donors and it sends a strong philanthropic message,” says Ms. Bolger. “Donors are inspired to give.”

The Walters has yet to start a formal campaign to raise money toward the $5-million endowment and is still assessing its fund-raising needs, says Toni Condon, the museum’s director of development.

The institution’s annual campaign, which concluded this summer, raised $13,000 more than its $1.4-million goal.

“That’s huge for us, as we always struggle to make our goal,” Ms. Condon says. “We received lots of feedback from donors saying they thought making the museum accessible to everyone was a great thing.”

Both museums have seen a drop in the number of donors who pay for annual memberships, since free access was the main benefit such memberships provided. Basic memberships cost $50 at both the Walters and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

The number of members at the Walters has dropped 24 percent since admission charges were dropped, though Mr. Vikan says these numbers are beginning to rebound as appeals are crafted to stress how paying members help the museum finance free access for everyone.

The Baltimore Museum of Art has seen a 10-percent drop in the number of new memberships and renewals.

Both museums are now offering members free admission to special exhibits staged throughout the year that continue to carry admission charges. (Members used to receive discounted tickets for special exhibits.)

Museum officials see other encouraging signs from the decision to drop admission fees.

“What’s interesting is the number of people who upgraded their memberships, or for the first time gave significant gifts to the annual fund,” Ms. Bolger says. “They recognized the need to support this general access to the community.”

Neither museum has faced any major security or housekeeping issues as a result of the rise in visitors. Mr. Vikan said the museum’s current staff was sufficient to respond to increased needs, so no additional costs have been incurred.

Courting Tourists

While some art museums have been dropping admissions, many of the nation’s largest art museums have been raising entrance fees, such as the Museum of Modern Art, which raised the fee for adults from $12 to $20 after moving into a new $425-million building in 2005. The Philadelphia Museum of Art raised admission from $12 to $14 last month; admission fees there have doubled over the past decade.

Other museums where admissions fees are now in the double digits include the Art Institute of Chicago, which charges $15, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, at $17, and the Whitney Museum in New York, with $15.

“What we see are museums taking admission fees in both directions,” says Jason Hall, director of government and media relations at the American Association of Museums. “It’s a question of what the board and the director are trying to accomplish and what their priorities are for the institution.”

Analysis by the association shows that museums that have the greatest success going free are midsize, “regional” museums that draw the bulk of their visitors from a limited geographic area, as opposed to large museums that attract a significant number of tourists from outside the region.

“The Museum of Modern Art is a world-famous institution that a lot of people are likely to come to and not be deterred by a high admission price,” says Mr. Hall. “For them to make the decision to go free is an entirely different equation than if admissions are only a small piece of income.”

What could be considered a compromise for museums is to offer free admissions at certain times. Target, the national retailer, sponsors free days or evenings at more than 30 museums and cultural institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, which is free every Friday night.

“Every museum faces different circumstances,” says Mr. Vikan. “But raising admission prices to what the market will bear is the wrong approach. Instead, you should push them down to what the institution can bear.”