Fee-Free Museums a Good Idea?

This past weekend was Thanksgiving, and for me that meant coming home to Whitby to see my family, gorge myself on turkey and mashed potatoes and get my hot little hands on the newest issue of The Beaver.

Although the magazine’s front cover promised me an article about Canadian spies outwitting the Nazis in WWII (always a fun time), it was a smaller article by Christopher Moore entitled “Land of the free museum” that initially caught my attention. Just a few hours before, we’d been discussing the cost of entrance fees in our Museology seminar and Professor Sendzikas had raised the question of how much we were willing to pay to go to a museum. We all answered the question in dollars and cents (in case you’re wondering, my threshold is around $20 before I really start to question my desire), but I think the discussion should have been bigger than that. Perhaps what we really should have been asking was: how much is our history worth to us (metaphorically speaking, that is)?

Moore’s article started out in generally the same way that our class discussion did – in terms of cold, hard, cash. He went through a list of Canadian museums and galleries and quoted the prices for a family of four at each of the institutions; they ranged from the relatively inexpensive ($18 for the National Gallery) to the moderately expensive ($47 for Fort Henry) to the exorbitant ($74 for the ROM... before the addition of any of the “blockbuster” exhibitions).[1] Moore’s next step was to compare our entrance fees to the entrance fees at even more prestigious institutions in the United States and England. I have to admit, I was intrigued. Canada has some amazing museums, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that any of them are in the same league as the Smithsonian or the Tate Modern.

Do you want to take a guess at how much admission costs for a family of four at the Natural History Museum or Museum of American History in Washington, DC? How about at the National Portrait Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum or the British Museum in London, England? You could guess, but you’d probably be wrong. There is no price; admission at all of these truly remarkable museums and galleries are free. [2] That’s right – zip, zero, zilch, nada.

I was floored when I saw these figures (so much so that I went to all of their websites and double-checked Moore’s data. For the record, it’s accurate). How can those museums afford to offer their visitors free admission?! How do they pay their staff, maintain their collections, or acquire new artifacts? The more I thought about it, however, the more I began to wonder how we, as Canadians, can afford not to do the same.

As I see it, high admission fees aren’t really in keeping with the values of our society. With our ridiculously expensive ticket prices, the museums and galleries in Canada have managed to commoditize our history to an extent that puts seeing and experiencing much of it outside the reach of a large number of Canadian citizens. This fact doesn’t sit well with me. Think of the message that this prohibitive pricing is sending to Canada’s poorer sections about their present and future worth in our society. Moore even suggests that museums teach people to appreciate their country and be better citizens. Do our high fees suggest that Canadians only care about middle- and upper-class citizens becoming “good” citizens? Possibly.

What real purpose do high entrance fees serve, anyway?

Although they contribute to the running of museums and galleries, the majority of funding for these institutions comes from government grants and private donations, not their admission fees. And if American and British museums have found a way to make up the shortfall caused by free admission, why can’t we do the same?

Some would argue that paying a higher entrance fee creates a perceived value of the contents of a museum in the mind of its visitors. This view may have some validity, but I would argue that those that visit free museums still appreciate them as repositories of our history and culture. It’s not like anyone walks away from the Smithsonian going, “Man, that sucked. If only they had made me pay to see it....”

Sources:

[1] Moore, Christopher. "Land of the free museum." The Beaver, October-November 2009, 13.
[2] Ibid.

The Rise of the "Starchitect"

This week in museology we briefly discussed the idea of the “starchitect” in response to mixed emotions surrounding Daniel Libeskind’s design of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal addition to the Royal Ontario Museum’s (ROM) original buildings in 2007.

As I understand it, a “starchitect” is an architect whose work has made them a celebrity in their own right (Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry come to mind). The argument that has been made by some is that in seeking to hire these celebrity architects, museums are placing a greater value on the aesthetics of the buildings that house their collections and the publicity resulting from the attachment of a famous name to their project, than they are on the ability of the new space to function as a museum.

Oftentimes these new museums (or additions to existing museums) are visually striking creations of glass and steel, full of clean lines or sinuous curves. As a fan of modern architecture, I have to admit to finding many of these buildings both beautiful and intriguing. And I have been known, on occasion, to take planes, trains and automobiles just to be able to see the outside of one of these buildings. [Note: The photo to the right is one I took of Frank Gehry’s Dancing House in Prague – affectionately nicknamed the “Fred and Ginger Building”]

Unfortunately, architects are not museum workers and their designs often reflect this fact. One of the biggest criticisms of “starchitecture” is that while beautiful (or an eye-sore, depending on your point of view) they fail to take into account the practical day-to-day concerns of museum staff, such as excess natural light, heating and cooling, the feasibility of easily mounting paintings or displaying their artifacts, office space, collections storage, etc.

Considering the brouhaha surrounding The Crystal, I was curious as to the approach that went into choosing the design for the new Canadian Museum for Human Rights that is currently being built in Winnipeg. Upon a little research, I discovered that Antoine Predock’s design was chosen by “an international Architectural Review Committee (ARC) comprising architects, distinguished Canadian public servants and representatives of Friends of Canadian Museum for Human Rights Inc” (none of which are explicitly museum professionals). The objective set by the committee for the architects to guide them in their creations was for them to create “an inspirational building that achieves a complexity relating to the diversity of human experience.” If this was the only criteria that the architects vying for the job were given, then it seems that Predock’s design is a worthy choice – the building certainly looks complicated enough.

But where's the consideration of the building as a museum!? I realize that the CMHR is planning on focusing on technology-based exhibits as opposed to collections-based ones, but where's the consideration of light, or office space or any of the other countless concerns that I, as someone who has never worked in a museum, couldn't possibly fathom?

As the building is not due for completion until 2012, perhaps only time will tell how functional the space is as a museum. I’ll be interested to follow this museum as it develops.

Oh, and if you would like to follow the museum as it develops, be sure to check out the museum's website, where the progress at the construction site is taped 24/7 and then edited down to a 1 minute clip that is posted once a week. It's a bit like watching paint dry at the moment, but it'll be interesting to see the changes made to the site over the next two years.

Source of Quotations:

http://www.dexigner.com/design_news/1739.html