Museum admission charges

There's been a fair amount of attention given to the announcement that New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) will shortly be charging a record $20 for basic admission -- and to Mayor Bloomberg's let-them-eat-cake response: "Some things people can afford, some things people can't".

Museum director Glenn Lowry has been quoted defending the admission charge as a necessity for a private institution trying to make ends meet. Yet what about the near-billion-dollar cost of the new building? And while MoMA is a private institution, it is one of those odd American hybrids, a government-chartered nonprofit that receives favored tax treatment in exchange for permanently pledging itself to serving the general public. Most such institutions have managed to fulfill their charters rather better -- the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Public Library being two of the more prominent examples -- and one wonders how much more exclusionary a museum such as MoMA could get before running afoul of the tax authorities.

Posted by David on October 11, 2004 8:45 PM