Art Brings in the Bucks

Public Interest cannot be put in jeopardy; the arts are an education for the spirit; expositions ought to be accessible to all without restriction; one cannot ensure that everyone will benefit from them, but no one should be excluded and there is as much injustice in closing the door of annual expositions as there would be in having paid admission at the Louvre or at the Bibliothèque Impériale . --Anatole de Montaiglon, 1855

Not only were M. Montaiglon's protestations ignored, two years later, the Salon added a café. Museum shops started showing up in the late 1950's and by the 80's were discovered to be big businesses, with fancy catalogs and branch offices in shopping malls, and by the late 90s, websites.

The British Museum, the Tate and the Tate Modern, and many other superb London Museums have no entrance fees. Unfortunately, this allows them to be filled with people who are interested in the art and students, lots of students.

New York's Museum of Modern Art charges a $20 entrance fee. To be fair, the aforementioned London museums are publicly funded and MoMA is not. At any rate, stiff fees help keep out the riffraff and the people who would only look at the art and not spend big money in museum shop. Museum stores are important to the income of museums. In many cases they bring in much more money than do admission fees. Sales figures for the MoMA gift shop weren't ready available, but the SFMOMA, in a city 1/12th the size of NYC, pulls in $30 million a year.

Some other admission fees:
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (publicly supported): $25 for recent Pompei show
Seattle Art Museum: $15, more for special exhibits
Philadelphia Museum of Art: $16, plus special exhibit fees
Chicago Art Institute: $18