Prepared for Bumps, the Met Starts Charging Non-New Yorkers | Hacker News Reader

Prepared for Bumps, the Met Starts Charging Non-New Yorkers

nytimes.com

33 pointskevinyen48 comments

There is a lot to be said about seeing great art in a less crowded context. One of the best days of my life was when I went to Member Only Hours at MoMA, and I walked alone, in silence.

I live near the Met, and too many tour buses show up, discharge huge groups of people who hustle and shove from one famous piece to the other - ignoring the art that isn't in text books. It's not a checklist, it's a really incredible place. All people should be entitled to see "Self Portrait with Straw Hat" but man, maybe they should look at the pieces next to in, instead of running downstairs to check off the next box.

In my opinion, this will be a good thing - fundamentally, the land belongs to the people of the city of New York, and the free rent for that much acreage of Central Park on Fifth Avenue is an incalculable subsidy. It should at least _try_ to be more pleasant for the citizens of the city.

My first time at the Louvre, I was enjoying a relatively quiet stroll through the less crowded galleries after enjoying a thoroughly european vacation for about a week. It was only when I happened into a very busy gallery with a quickly moving throng of people. My reverie was shattered when I heard over my shoulder in a thick southern US drawl "Man, lets just go see the Mona Lisa and get the f* outta here." It was really the least impactful portion of our visit because of the throngs of people.

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. I first went to Paris in 2014, and I experienced the same thing. Throngs of people surrounding the Mona Lisa. I was with family that wasn't very receptive to the Louvre experience, so we pretty much "saw the Mona Lisa and got the f* out".

I'm heading back to Paris next month with just my wife, and I plan on spending at least 2 days in the Louvre. I wouldn't say that people ruin art, but what I saw with the Mona Lisa was not very positive.

The opposite of that can be equally irritating.

Take for instance the Galleria Borghese in Rome which only allows 500 visitors in pre-determined slots. If you miss your slot or everything is filled out during your trip, you'll miss out like we did.

What I haven't figured out is why museums like the Louvre need to close for the night, its art work. Why not leave it open all night long and shutdown for a few days for maintenance work.

[1] http://www.galleriaborghese.it/en/

I expect for the same reason most stores close down at night. Sure, you'll get some business but probably not enough to cover the costs of staying open. Furthermore, there's probably a lot of daily maintenance and cleaning to do.

Funny you mention that. I surprised my wife with a proposal in the gardens just outside there, after her and her sister visited the Galleria. Also pretty sure her cousin dated the Borghese prince who was on The Bachelor.

Mostly because people like to sleep and France has unions.

From looking at articles around this, the data looks like this:

    Museum budget          $  305M
    Admissions(current)    $   43M
    City Energy Subsidy    $   15M
    City General Subsidy   $   11M

    Expected windfall      $   ~6M
    City General Subsidy   $    8M

The new subsidy will apparently decline on a sliding scale as the admissions income increases, to a minimum of $8M from the current subsidy of $11M.

So the gain here is very small -- ~1% of the operating budget, but this is clearly a "foot-in-the-door" move.

25 bucks is pretty rich for just kicking around in a museum for a little while. Understand they need more funding but think they would do better with a lower price that doesn't result in turn aways (or never shows). And certainly taking a $20 out of your wallet just hurts less psychologically than having to fish out another bill as well.

"The Met" isn't just any old museum, it's a main reason to visit new york. I'd pay $100 for an entire day there (or three days, as it is now!). You simply can't see that quality of museum in many parts of the country, let alone the world.

As someone who lived in NY and went in the late 90s, I paid 5$ for the last couple hours of the day. The person I was with paid a quarter...which I thought was too little.

This forced admission is for out-of-towners, but I feel like its a tragedy of the commons that forced their hand.

I feel like I can only absorb so much art in a day before I have to stop....

edit: Someone noted the admission covers 3 days.

"The Met" isn't just any old museum

This is true. We take it for granted but the Met is one of the world's great museums.

In the past, they would happily have taken your $100 donation. I suspect that's still true.

Sure! Not my point though--just scoffing at the idea that $25 is at all too high for the experience.

I would also strongly support a sliding scale, though how that would work I have no idea.

They had a sliding scale already.

Whitney, Guggenheim, MoMA, Intrepid are all same price or more. Elevator rides up one of the famous skyscrapers are all more expensive. $25 for Met is better value compared to all of them.

Seems to be working out well for MOMA for years, and it's a much smaller museum.

The de Young in San Francisco is $26 weekdays and $29 weekends, and while it's a fine museum, it's not the Met.

This is what price discovery looks like. If it doesn't pan out the way they want, I'm sure they will adjust in a year.

This is a great museum, and the price is not that high.

My family and I were in NYC in December. We visited the American Museum of Natural History, which have the same policy of "pay what you want".

We were there at the opening, because, as the Met, it's a pretty big museum and you (really) need the day if you want to make a full tour of it.

We then had 2 solutions. Waiting who know how long behind around 30-40 persons to have tickets, or go to the paying kiosk.

Well, in that paying kiosk, you cannot "pay as you want". But I still choosed to pay full price instead of waisting my time in a line with my 7yo kids.

We went on the Met on our last day in NYC, purely randomly. And, of course, I was happy not to pay a hundred bucks for the 4 of us (admitting that it's also the price for kids ?).

But due to the quality of the exhibitions, it's a normal price. Perhaps 20$ might have been better.

Disclaimer : I'm not american, so I don't know the "normal" policy for museum entrance. Here in France, you usually have to pay for museum, except a few days per years. For example, the Louvre museum in Paris is around 20$.

$25 is on the higher side for admissions in the US but, as others have noted, the Met is both huge and outstanding. $10-$20 is probably the more common museum admission range. [ADDED: NYC is probably higher in general than in other cities.]

Article shows Children under 12 are free (even for non-residents of NY state).

I don't have a problem with the general concept. Tourists spend a lot of money coming to visit NYC in no small part because of attractions like the Met. Why should the airlines, hotels, restaurants, bars and so on get some of that but not the actual attraction itself?

That said, as I understand significant mismanagement and scope creep have lead to the financial shortfall that inspired this pricing change. I worry that in signing off on this change the city has rewarded misfeasiance.

The Met was build on a city property/building, and since the 1870 its mission has been to provide art and culture free of charge.

Should the Met charge us residents but out of state visitors? eg. people that just live across Hudson (NJ)? How about, lets say the visiting parents of somebody that lives in NYC? How about people that lived here and moved away at some point.

On the other hand, the Met has no alliance for the random foreign tourists that come and visit, so charging them is an easy case.

Frankly, I’m still salty that the commuter tax was done away with by the corrupt Sheldon Silver. If the only thing that NJites have pay for is the Met they are getting off very easy. A similar argument can be made for the rest of the country, given our balance of payments with Washington.

The lifelong NYer that moved to Florida last year is a decent point, but it’s also a rather small edge case.

I think it's pretty simple: do you have a driver license or ID that says "New York State"? Free. You don't? Pay.

I've visited this museum on past trips to New York but will now be less likely to do so. In the past I've gone in, paid $5-10 and spent 1-3 hours at the museum before moving on. It's a really big museum so I'd do this multiple times in a trip. Paying $25 I'd feel like I have to put everything I want to see into a single, longer visit. That's a lot less interesting to me than breaking it into several smaller visits over a few days.

The $25 admission gets you in for 3 consecutive days, which seems like it should still (mostly) support your way of using the museum?

This is an under-communicated point, and both makes the admission more palatable while subtly increasing the sense of value through the implication that you'll need multiple days to actually take in the breadth of the institution's collections.

I was unaware of that. If I can spread my museum time over three days then I would definitely be willing to spend the $25.

I noticed this from the article: The proportion of museumgoers who pay a “suggested” amount has declined from 63 percent to 17 percent over the last 13 years...

Which made me think of something else I've encountered, which is that the percentage of people who respond to phone polls has plummeted over a similar time frame - http://www.pewresearch.org/2017/05/15/what-low-response-rate...

I wonder if these trends are related symptoms of a cultural change away from community-mindedness, and if so, has anyone seen other numbers in the same vein?

I think it's because more casual and lower income demographics have started visiting museums in that time period.

The disposable income went down for the vast majority of the population. Don't look further.

>The proportion of museumgoers who pay a “suggested” amount has declined from 63 percent to 17 percent over the last 13 years...

That's pretty striking. I've always taken the Met's policy in the vein of "You don't HAVE to pay this amount but you really should" and always have. (Even though I admit to not always throwing money in when it's a more casual please donate situation.)

I'm pretty surprised that payments had dipped this low.

I'm not sure I put it in the same class as phone calls though. So many unsolicited phone calls are just random robocall SPAM that it's not as if I'm passing up some societal contribution by not answering.

That's a fair point but seems like it's only part of the picture, I just did a bit more digging and it looks like the proportion of people who pick up has dropped by about 1/3 while the proportion of people who agree to participate after talking to the live pollster has dropped by 3x, a similar decline to the proportion who pay the Met. http://www.people-press.org/2012/05/15/assessing-the-represe...

Obviously though drawing conclusions from these two trends would be premature, so I'm hoping someone might think of numbers they've seen on similar topics, whether they align with these or not.

And they stopped doing the metal buttons as proof of purchase! Which was a minor souvenir in itself and also could be picked up off the stairs/sidewalk out front

The "voluntary" admission never felt all that voluntary to me. Sure. You could say no when you got to the cashier. But it always felt to me at least that there was a strong vibe of you really ought to pay this amount unless you really can't afford to.

It's certainly a different character from the museums in London, for example, that just have their big donation buckets.

With the Met, this actually more honest than it was before.

That sort of is the point though. People shouldn't feel great about being cheapskates.

So IIUC, they're charging people differently based on their nationality (in the sense the people from outside the U.S. cannot get the discount).

Is such discrimitory pricing legal?

Yes. There are a bunch of places in SF that give discounts if you are a local.

I'm not sure if that's the same as it being legal. I'd be curious to know of any case law on the matter.

I would suspect yes. Almost every college and university in the US has higher rates for non-state residents.

Also important to note that this is not based on nationality; it is based on state of residence. This higher fee applies to residents of the other 49 US states, as well as international visitors.

I can't read nytimes (not a subscriber) but how are they verifying citizenship?

They likely are only verify residency (via ID or utility bill), so persons of other nationalities but living in NY should get a discount.

Here's how I see it: I pay city taxes all year round, visitors don't. The policy is fair.

No problem with this, but then art donations to the museum should not be federally tax deductible. Donations should be tax deductible only if they benefit the entire tax base — if the Met only offers free admission to New Yorkers, billionaires should only be able to deduct their New York taxes when they donate Michelangelos.

There is absolutely no requirement that tax exempt organizations can't charge admission fees, membership fees, etc.

There isn’t now, but there should be.

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