(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



Why the Government Needs to Support America’s Museums [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-06-26  

Access to a country’s cultural heritage is an important part of creating a common sense of identity and belonging. Yet, access has sharply decreased in the United States, as prices rise far beyond most people’s affordability. Museums across the country face rising costs, which have forced them to ramp up admission prices at a time when most Americans are battling inflation and basic stick price shock. According to The New York Times , the Guggenheim Museum, one of the country’s great museums, has seen its annual attendance slip from 1.3 million in 2019 to 861,000 visitors in 2023, as salary expenses, and the costs of everything else have shot up. This is part of a broader trend. The American Alliance of Museums found that only a third of museums have pre-pandemic attendance levels, while two-thirds have just 70% of their pre-pandemic levels. Over half of museums expect their profits to either stay the same or decline. Museums have to raise prices, this isn’t a diatribe about museums raising prices. What this is is a call for the government to make access to culture a part of its mission and support cultural institutions with more funding. Otherwise, our country’s museums, galleries, and other institutions will simply be for the wealthy.

There is a model for what I am calling for. You can visit the Louvre, the world’s greatest museum, for just €22 ($23.54), compared to $30 for a ticket to the Gugenheim. American museums are generally more expensive than European museums, with $30 becoming the new norm, with museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art already on $30 an adult. The reasons are embedded in culture. According to Pew Research , while 58% of AMericans believe that the government should not interfere in their lives, majorities in all European countries believe that making sure there is no one in need is more important, and, therefore, that the state has a big role to play. Europeans are just more comfortable with a big state than Americans. “Regulation” or “state funding” can sometimes feel like dirty words in America.

However, there is a case to be made that there are aspects of our lives in which we cannot automatically assume that the free market is better than the government, places where private enterprise, leaving it up to individuals, leads to unfair outcomes. This is because those parts of society cannot be given over to the profit motive, and it is not possible to produce a good at such scale that it can be provided in abundance and at low prices. Access to culture is one of them. The Guggenheim cannot provide its services to all Americans at once, it is not like Facebook, with zero costs to distribution, it’s not like this article, that can be produced at no costs and be scaled such that everyone on the planet can read it. It’s a building in which only so many people can enter every year, and we want everyone who can possibly do so, rich or poor, to have a chance to go through its doors. Let’s say the Guggenheim can take in 2 million visitors a year. At $30 an adult, that’s a maximum of $60 million in income. The Guggenheim cannot keep raising prices without losing some visitors. There’s a sweet spot where it can reach, say, $40 an adult, after which, the number of visitors and its revenue declines. Is $60 million enough? According to its last Statement of Activities and Changes in Net Assets , when the Guggenheim earned $16.4 million in admissions fees, the museum had operating expenses of $63.87 million, compared to a total income of $63.76 million. With admissions revenue in decline, the Guggenheim has no choice other than to cut costs, and raise ticket fees. It has done both. So have countless other museums.

Although museums receive tax-exemptions as nonprofits, and this is obviously a financial benefit, in order to qualify, they cannot run as for-profit organizations, they have to keep their collections widely accessible. This places a cap on just how high fees can be. This is right. However, their costs don’t care about such things. The cost of shipping an artwork is the same regardless of tax status. So the revenue engine is dampened while the costs ran amok. The result is chaos on financials. Government funding is very inadequate. For instance, in 2023, per the New York Times, the “Met received $26 million in government funding for the 2023 fiscal year, on an annual budget of around $300 million, while the Guggenheim received $520,000 during the same period, on a budget of $67.7 million.”

Inflation, rising wages, and falling attendance have combined to push museums into a crisis. Many museums find that they are forced to reach out to wealthy donors, who often place restrictions on their donations that make it impossible to put that money toward operating costs. Few donors want to support salaries, for example, but funding an exhibition of Monet’s is much more interesting. This economic crisis is happening at a time when new museums have been built or old museums renovated. The scope of disaster is great.

With a Great Society style support of museums, many will be forced to continue laying off staff, and America’s youth will never develop a meaningful relationship with their culture. Europe has shown that aggressive state support can lead to high attendance levels.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/26/2248867/-Why-the-Government-Needs-to-Support-America-s-Museums?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/