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Comment by Blikkentrekker | Hacker News Reader

I find this to be such an arbitrary standard.

It's a form of visual entertainment no different from visiting the cinema or a theatre; of course one is to pay for it.

They make expenses housing these paintings just as a cinema does, and have the right to charge to recuperate this.

In fact, I see no reason why musea should even be allowed to be non-profit. — is a cinema ever non profit?

There seems to be a rather arbitrary mentality that some entertainment should be free, in particular whatever entertainment “the cultural establishment” has arbitrarily declared to be “intellectual”, often for no other reason than that it's old.

Wishing to see a famous painting with one's own eyes is no different from wanting to see a famous singer perform live. — a man should pay for it if he wish to do so.

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In the Netherlands many of the musea are semi public, and especially the Rijks get a lot of tax money and also a lot of donations. The Rijksmusem is actually the national museum, Rijk is another word for State or maybe closer to empire. It's entire collection is the heritage of the Dutch state. So in this case it's not a bad argument to make that it shouldn't be hidden in a basement but shared with the public. Although since the nineties the Rijks is officially an independent foundation.

I know. I am merely asking why the state owns a museum and not a cinema or strip club.

I find that some draw an arbitrary distinction between “art” and “entertainment” with endless semantics debates of what constitutes “art”, but typically fueled by “whatever the party that decides it feels is sufficiently associated with the intellectual elite rather than the bourgeois common man.”.

I find this distinction to be bereft of merit and yet another example of trying to create a line between the rich and the poor.

If the poor man showed an interest in Rembrandt, it would be called entertainment; if the rich man were more fond of 50 Cent, it would be called art.

That's an interesting remark indeed. Though I do see some differences that might explain it. For example, the cinemas and museums differ vastly on the medium they serve. A copy of a painting bears little value. A singer is unique in its persona for the live ecperience but can serve a large crowd in one sitting, saturating the market. Whereas a painting can only be viewed by a small crowd at any single time, given you want to see the original and not a display. So it will take ages to extract value when based on a reasonable ticket price. This stands in contrast with the prices often paid for high profile pieces, giving reason to subsidized content. Which in general is best served to a non profit.

Or to put it more bluntly, art is an archaic medium of entertainment that has little chance of survival against modern media and society wishes to keep it.

> A singer is unique in its persona for the live ecperience but can serve a large crowd in one sitting, saturating the market. Whereas a painting can only be viewed by a small crowd at any single time, given you want to see the original and not a display.

A singer can only serve a large crowd if his voice be amplified by some mechanism, which is no different than electronically magnifying a painting.

For the “authentic” experience, one would have to be closer, which means the serving would be diminished in capacity.

Apart from that, the Dutch government arbitrarily gives out art subsidies for musical performances, invariably performances it arbitrarily deems “artistic” enough, which seems to come down to little more than “whatever style of music it associates with an older, more educated, wealthier audience.”

I find it rather arbitrary that Wibi Soerjadi can cash in his art subsidies, but Anouk cannot.

> Or to put it more bluntly, art is an archaic medium of entertainment that has little chance of survival against modern media and society wishes to keep it.

And I would submit that the reasons that society wishes to keep it, is purely because it's associated with rich, educated adults.

My argument leans heavily in the fact that electronically magnifying a painting does not work for most, whereas amplified voices do. Otherwise everyone can just Google the paintings right? The magic is seeing it in real life. Which has practical limitations hampering the business case.

And everyone can also listen to music at home, yet many go to concerts instead, and many say that hearing a band performed unplugged adds an extra layer of authenticity and intimacy to the sound.

Yes, exactly. People can listen music at home, and also see pictures of paintings at home. Yet people do go to digitally scaled events of musicians, while they don't go to digitally scaled events of paintings. Why that is, I tried to explain in my previous post. Your argument regarding authenticity of unplugged artists applies only to a fraction of people.

> is a cinema ever non profit?

Yes? I regularly attend showings at a non-profit cine-club.

Or on the other hand, it seems that the real crime is that you have to pay to see the movies. Art and entertainment are both the shared inheritance of all humans, and all humans have the inherent right to freely and indefinitely enjoy them.

For movies with nine-figures budgets it makes sense to protect them, similar to patents - but it is absolutely mind-boggling that unlike patents, copyright expires 70 years after the death of the author.

Few would donate to the museums if they were for profit, which would destroy the economics.

Many museums are education oriented rather than entertainment oriented anyways. There is a reason school busses are constantly distorting students.

> is a cinema ever non profit?

Occasionally. Or at least run in a "only making the bills because they are supported by donations and public funds" fashion similar to many museums and other arts things.

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