Imagine that you could stroll into any art museum as easily as you enter a public library or a shopping mall or the local grocery store. You don’t have to stop at a desk or wait in line. No one asks for identification or, best of all, makes you pay. Would you go to your city’s museum more often, or bring friends when they visit from out of town? When money is tight, would it make the museum a better choice for your family outings?
Most important, would it make you feel more connected to art?
Free museums are a reality in not-so-distant places, like Kansas City, St. Louis and Cleveland, where the major civic art institutions don’t charge admission. They find ways to get around requiring people to pay to see their collections of Monets, Picassos, van Goghs and Warhols.
Is that a possibility for Denver? Not in the short term. Admission revenue is built into the Denver Art Museum’s current business model, and losing it could devastate the bottom line.
But more and more, museum leaders are recognizing that admission fees, even small ones, create barriers that need to come down. Last month, DAM made itself free for everyone under the age of 18, following a similar move by the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver in 2013.
This year, the Clyfford Still Museum went free on Fridays from 5 to 8 p.m. and joined the city’s MyCard program, allowing all school kids, plus an accompanying adult, in at no charge on weekends.
In the same spirit, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art reduced its admission price in January from $5 to just $1 for all.
“We wanted people to pay something, but to make it more accessible,” said Director David Dadone. “And everybody has a dollar in their pocket.”
It’s a national trend. The Dallas Art Museum went free in 2013. Los Angeles’ Hammer Museum, not the city’s biggest, but certainly a player, dropped admission in 2014.
It will be interesting to see how reductions alter habits, because here’s the fact: Museums are not that expensive in the first place.
DAM, for example, charged kids only $3. Adults in Colorado pay $10, a fraction of what customers shell out for sporting events and pop concerts. “If you compare this to anything else in the entertainment area, it’s a steal,” notes DAM director Christoph Heinrich.
Still, people routinely list price as a major factor when surveys ask why they don’t attend art events more often. It’s a matter of priorities that challenges museum directors, whose job is to ensure the greatest level of access possible.
Of course, they don’t need surveys to gauge the price point people want to pay.
The city’s arts institutions are overrun on days when they don’t charge, whether those are the free first Saturdays sponsored by Target at DAM or the 10 or so free days all the top cultural entities give back in return for multi-million pay-outs from the seven-county Scientific and Cultural Facilities District, which funds nonprofit organizations through a voter-approved sales tax.
It’s not that people don’t want museums — attendance is as high as ever. It’s that they want museums they don’t have to pay for. They want a city collection that gets city funding to be free. Like the library.
They also don’t want to pay twice. Government subsidies vary because they are based on monthly retail activity, but DAM got $6.9 million from the SCFD in 2014, plus $1.3 million from the city.
No one suggests the money is wasted or misspent. Not at all. Museums vary in what they collect and present, and DAM is as good as any peer — better in areas like Western and American Indian art. For that $10, DAM delivers transcendence, every time.
It’s about priorities, which also vary. If DAM dropped admission, it would have a leaner budget, at least in the short-term, and that could lead to fewer exhibits, less staffing and programming.
But it would also open the doors to a new relationship with the city. The affinity folks have on free days might last 365 days a year.
It’s not the money Museum fees are only partly about affordability, though the money adds up. Hit DAM six times a year and that’s $60, double that for a couple.
You can reduce the risk and add unlimited visits by purchasing a membership — $55 for a single, $75 for two, and that also gets you 10 percent off in the gift shop.
Balancing that are the free days, but they come with their own baggage, creating a two-tiered visitor structure.
Full payers can get a less-crowded, more leisurely experience; on some weekday afternoons, they practically have DAM to themselves.
People who rely on free days have to queue up and try not to bump into one another. Visit often and you see that the well-off and not, young and old, tend to go the museum at different times.
Dropping admission can level the playing field in ways that go beyond finances — more important ways.
While technically, the museum’s art is owned by a non-profit, DAM trades on the reputation of the city itself. Donors always speak of giving their prized possessions to “the people of Denver.”
Charging anything puts up a barrier between that art and “the people.” You don’t have to pay for things you already own — you do have to pay for things somebody else owns.
Cities that make their museums free create a casual atmosphere that invites everyone in all the time. In free cities, people pop in at lunch, or stop in for 15 minutes every Thursday to take in one painting at a time. Free museums are places where friends meet and hometowners take guests to show off what their community has built and can access without permission. As price goes down, passion goes up and there is some evidence of this in St. Louis and Kansas City.
Denver’s incentive to purchase an annual membership is high — since it makes every visit free. Museum revenue from memberships has hovered at roughly $3 million a year.
Even though general admission is free all the time, the St. Louis Art Museum and the Nelson-Atkins in Kansas City earn similar membership revenues.
To be fair, it’s not that simple. Members in those cities do receive discounts on special shows, parking, restaurants, even local businesses. “They get a lot more than free admission,” said the Nelson-Atkins’ Kathleen Leighton. “There are a lot of reasons to join.”
But it’s also fair to assume they step up out of a sense of responsibility. They join because supporting the museum is the right thing to do. That’s different than joining because it saves money.
It seems a museum can have either sort of relationship and still get its $3 million, But which is preferable? Which creates a stronger bond between art and people, between a city and its treasures?
Let’s add this: Which breaks down the divisions between who can go to the museum and when, and fosters an interaction between diverse people at different income levels?
Those questions ought to be answered honestly, and responsibly, and now’s the time. SCFD comes up for a 10-year reauthorization in 2016 and, as a seven-county community, we should be talking about how our arts organizations can work best.
Once a decade, everybody has a meaningful say — the boards, the staff and “the people” who vote.
Ray Mark Rinaldi: 303-954-1540, rrinaldi@denverpost.com or twitter.com/rayrinaldi
