New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is set to raise the price of an adult ticket from $25 to $30. The move comes just weeks after the Whitney Museum of American Art announced an identical change in pricing structure and reflects the Guggenheim’s efforts to reckon with diminished attendance in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis, and with the costs of a newly unionized staff, as well as with inflation. It also shows the institution to be betting on the loyalty of a smaller, core arts audience, rather than on expanding its reach to less affluent audiences with less focused interests.
“As we recover from the lingering financial strain caused by the pandemic, the museum needs to increase its admission prices, which have not been adjusted since 2015,” Guggenheim spokeswoman Sara Fox told the New York Times. “The new rates align with those of the museum community in New York City and will help support the operational costs of the museum.”
The new ticket price is in line with that charged by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which last summer ditched its long-standing “pay what you wish” policy for all but New York state residents and tristate area students; out-of-state adult visitors must now shell out $30 to enter the institution. Elsewhere in the city, the Museum of Modern Art charges an adult general admission of $25, while that at the New Museum is $18 and the Brooklyn Museum is asking for $16. The Bronx and Queens museums are free of charge. Around the country, museum ticket prices have risen as well, with the Philadelphia Museum of Art raising adult admission from $25 to $30 in June, and the Art Institute of Chicago hiking prices for out-of-state adult visitors to $32.
Despite the limited pay-what-you-wish hours in force at many museums, elevated prices tend to result in an audience that is less diverse in every way. Critics argue that revenues generated by admission typically account for just a fraction of many museums’ budgets, noting that institutions are additionally and variously supported by endowments, donations, and subsidies, while frequently receiving nonprofit tax breaks. However, much of the money flowing in from these quarters comes with strings attached, being earmarked for specific expenditures.
“There are over 35,000 museums in the United States,” Marcus Harshaw, a senior director of museum experience at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Science Center and a museum studies lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, told the Times. “I promise that 35,000 museums are trying to figure out how to earn more income at the gate or raise more contributions from their trustees and communities.”
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