Walking out for free

In January 2008, the French president Nicholas Sarkozy, known for his love of culture, if only by the fact that he married a gorgeous fashion-model cum singer, started a nation-wide experiment in which 18 museums in France offered free admission for 6 months and others, including the Louvre offered it to visitors under 26 once a week.

As a tourist, a francophile and an art lover, I could but rejoice at the philanthropic effort of the French president, which reportedly cost somewhere between 150 and 200 million Euros. The French, in a feat of historical consistency, were more skeptical.

While the advocates of the free admission pointed out similar practices in Britain, others feared that instead of diversifying the body of museum visitors – clearly the goal of the experiment – free admission would only benefit tourists, travel companies and regular museum visitors, without actually adding anything to the mix.

When the experiment concluded three months ago, the final tally was on the skeptics side: The number of visitors went up by 53%, including a whopping 153% in the palace of Jacques-Coeur in Bourges, but the increase was almost entirely on the account of regular visitors.

Demographics aside, an additional consideration that the articles do not note, is the changed experience one has in a museum that is visited by 153% more people than before. Granted, if the visitor number is low to begin with, the doubling that will not make the halls crowded nor the air unbreathable. However, museums like the Louvre, the Hermitage or the MoMA, already packed even with double-digit entry fees, feel like WalMart on a Monday evening when they have their free nights. In their case, entry fees help to filter out the interested tourists and the art-lovers from random wanderers.

Also note, that the loss in revenues for museums and higher government spending means that museums get to spend less on improving their collections and acquiring new items. Which is the priority then?

I’m not making a case here against free admission, this New York Times article presents pretty well how big a problem over commercialisation poses to the cultural heritage world. Furthermore, the British report that their decision to go free on most of their major museums has been met with great success. The French, on the other hand, have demonstrated that every experiment needs not only a hypothesis but also intensive research, without that, free admission may remain just another populist political gimmick.