Should museums be free? (ctd.)
November 5 2015
Picture: Guardian
Here in the UK, one of the culture arguments we like to debate endlessly is whether museums should be free to visit. Since the early 2000s, government funded museums have been free to enter. And, on the whole, that's a Good Thing (in my view).
However, the British Museum has re-opened the debate by suggesting it might levy a fee for 'tour groups'. These tour groups are generally full of foreigners, so the story has become, 'British Museum to charge foreigners'. Which on one level makes sense, for it is UK taxpayers who deserve free entry, not overseas tourists. I don't get into the Louvre for free, after all. And overseas visitors make up the majority of the British Museum's visitors.
The trouble is, there's no way, in practice, to charge 'foreigners'. How do you establish who is 'foreign'? ID cards? We don't have them. And in any case, EU law prevents museums charging French visitors but not British ones.
Jonathan Jones in The Guardian, however, goes one step further, and says we should all be paying to get into museums:
The same people who support protests against corporate sponsorship almost certainly support universal free entry. But unfortunately, a Conservative government was elected this year, and is committed to deep cuts. Museums, already feeling the pinch after five years of fiscal stringency under the coalition, have been warned to prepare for big reductions in funding.
Museums deserve our support in these difficult times, but instead they get censured if they put a foot wrong. The National Gallery was criticised for turning to privatisation to tackle the finding crisis. The Tate and National Portrait Gallery share the stick for accepting the largesse of BP. Now the British Museum will be accused of flirting with entrance charges.
The reality is that our superb museums are staring into a financial abyss. I would love them to stay free, but an entrance charge is now the most rational way of protecting these great institutions. We pay for every other cultural activity, for theatre, cinema, music, games, books and sport – why must museums be the poor relation?
Arguments like this ignore the fact that major UK museums like the National Gallery are, despite the 'Tory cuts', better off than ever before. As the saying goes, 'if it ain't broke...'
There is, however, a real problem with tour groups at museums, and if it was up to me I would ban them. Large, dense and slow-moving groups following a loud (often ignorant) tour guide are a real menace to the general visitor, clogging up corridors and making it impossible to see popular works. When I went to the Louvre the other day, such groups made the museum almost impossible to navigate. A tense standoff outside a lift (capacity 6) between us and a Chinese tour group, of about 12, was only resolved by aggressive positioning of the pushchair.
Update - a reader writes:
Simple. Groups of ten or more max 25 must be escorted by a Museum Guide at a fee of £ 75 per hour (one hour minimum) plus £ 2 per person. This provides museum revenues and employment for art history students. Cheap disposable earbuds will be provided as with large tour groups everywhere now and the Guide can speak softly into a lapel mic.
School groups are free if scheduled ahead at hours approved by the Museum. This will space groups. We should encourage kids to visit.
