Free is a Price: Considering the cost of gallery admission
As admission prices soar worldwide, we consider the funding of public galleries in the UK...
By
Susan Gray
January 4, 2024
Twenty-second anniversaries are rarely greeted with fanfare, and marking the abolition of entrance fees for national museum and gallery collections in December 2001 has passed without murmur. But while British gallery-goers take the now-standard free entrance to national treasures for granted, European galleries are raising the price for seeing their country’s collections; in January, the Louvre is increasing its admission fee by €5 to €22, while in Berlin the cost of visiting state museums will rise by €2. From 15th January, entry for one adult to the Altes Museum, the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Bode Museum or the Gemäldegalerie will increase to €12 from €10. Admission to the Hamburger Bahnhof, the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Pergamon or the Neues Museum will rise to €14 from €12. Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, crystallised the dilemma faced by public gallery directors everywhere: “Like many cultural institutions, we are facing very tight budgets which means that we have to increase income and reduce spending”.
With no income from entrance fees, British public galleries are reliant on three main levers for customer revenue: blockbuster exhibitions, membership and retail. Temporary shows with ‘Impressionist’ in the title tend to be crowd-pleasers, while familiar Pre Raphaelite images of wavy-haired ‘stunners’ reproduce well on tote bags and tea towels - little wonder both art movements are regularly surveyed and endlessly reimagined in well-publicised exhibitions.
Crowds and long queues for popular shows act as recruiting sergeants for gallery membership schemes. Once marketed as magic carpets for escaping queues and crowds, annual memberships or Friends schemes, costing around £100 - £140 for two people, teeter on the brink of over-expansion from their own success. For international touring blockbusters such as Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto at the V&A, museum membership offered no protection, even on a weekday morning, from lengthy waits to enter the show, and horseshoes of spectators around every display - but in 2024 membership offers the only way to see the sold-out Chanel retrospective. When membership becomes a surrogate show ticket, once exclusive perks such as Member’s Rooms cease to be oases of calm and start fraying under the pressure of numbers.
Around three paid shows a year is the break-even point for membership schemes. And, as gallery-goers progress on their journey to getting their money’s worth, they also pass through a data-rich gateway for galleries to cultivate the donors, legacy-givers and patrons of the future. For galleries memberships offer the initial benefit of funds upfront, but also the prospect of far greater financial support down the line. Tate Collective, the gallery’s £5 ticket scheme for under 25s, is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year, and many of the scheme’s 150,000 members go on to be full Members. Creating a Members’ Room is integral to the National Gallery’s 200th anniversary NG 200 refurbishment, emphasising the key role membership schemes will play in the gallery’s finances going into its third century. It is to be hoped the expansion of membership schemes does not result in a two-tier, airline-style business and economy split between the experiences of gallery goers.
Widening the audience for art was one of the major drivers behind the free entrance campaign of the late 1990s, and the National Gallery’s pay-what-you-wish Friday Lates offers access to its paid shows - currently Frans Hal - for as little as a pound. Established in autumn 2022 as a response to the cost of living crisis, pay-what-you-wish has undeniably increased the number of first-time and younger visitors to the gallery. Nearly one in four Friday evening visitors were attending a paid-for exhibition for the first time. Over the last two paying exhibitions, 23% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art and 22% to Lucian Freud: New Perspectives came to a paying exhibition for the first time. 6% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to New Perspectives and 5% of them to After Impressionism came to the National Gallery and its collection for the first time. About 21% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to After Impressionism were aged 35 to 44, marking an 11% increase from the overall Gallery average during the 2022/23 financial year. Dr Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery, says: 'While our collection and most of our temporary exhibitions are free, the Pay What You Wish scheme continues to enable practically anyone who wants to see our paying exhibitions to do so”.
Outside the capital, the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich has taken the admission price debate one step further, by abolishing the demarcation between seeing Robert and Lisa Sainsbury’s permanent collection for free and paid-for temporary exhibitions. Since February 2023, visitors to the Sainsbury Centre have been issued with a universal ticket for whatever donation they wish to make, including zero. Director Dr Jago Cooper is also encouraging visitors to relate to art objects differently, experiencing their ’life force’, through touching, and also by becoming an exhibit themselves, by sitting in a glass case. These curatorial changes and ‘pay what - and if - you can’ initiatives have increased the number of families and under 30s visiting the gallery.
Cafes and shops are galleries’ third channel of income, and in 2022/23 the National Gallery’s trading income was £3.8m, with a further £9.4m generated by National Gallery Global. Janus-like, galleries are expected to make their mark on the world stage through touring exhibitions and lure high-spending overseas visitors, while simultaneously satisfying domestic demand for participation and social inclusion. Last year 40% of Tate Modern’s 4.4 million visitors were from overseas.
Can a financially necessary ‘exit through the gift shop’ culture genuinely co-exist with a commitment to outreach and inclusion? Personally, I feel the prominence given to cafes and shops in cultural institutions is a barrier to visits from low-income families, whose budgets cannot withstand spontaneous expenditure. A low-cost, all-inclusive pass covering the cloakroom, a snack and small souvenirs could be a solution, so children from all backgrounds can experience enjoying a gallery with their families. Teacher friends in inner London schools also report that the much-vaunted outreach schemes for deprived students can sometimes amount to nothing more than a timed slot in the lunchroom and a dry-as-dust lecture.
But these caveats are tiny and easy to fix compared to the great joy of no-cost entry to works of art held for the nation. Fixed budgets and rising expectations make galleries underwrite a blank cheque, which they can only fulfil through ever-increasing ingenuity and creativity. In 2026, the Art Fund-led campaign for free gallery admission will celebrate its silver anniversary, and this would be an appropriate time to acknowledge and appreciate the continuing efforts of the galleries that make this priceless gift possible.
Twenty-second anniversaries are rarely greeted with fanfare, and marking the abolition of entrance fees for national museum and gallery collections in December 2001 has passed without murmur. But while British gallery-goers take the now-standard free entrance to national treasures for granted, European galleries are raising the price for seeing their country’s collections; in January, the Louvre is increasing its admission fee by €5 to €22, while in Berlin the cost of visiting state museums will rise by €2. From 15th January, entry for one adult to the Altes Museum, the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Bode Museum or the Gemäldegalerie will increase to €12 from €10. Admission to the Hamburger Bahnhof, the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Pergamon or the Neues Museum will rise to €14 from €12. Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, crystallised the dilemma faced by public gallery directors everywhere: “Like many cultural institutions, we are facing very tight budgets which means that we have to increase income and reduce spending”.
With no income from entrance fees, British public galleries are reliant on three main levers for customer revenue: blockbuster exhibitions, membership and retail. Temporary shows with ‘Impressionist’ in the title tend to be crowd-pleasers, while familiar Pre Raphaelite images of wavy-haired ‘stunners’ reproduce well on tote bags and tea towels - little wonder both art movements are regularly surveyed and endlessly reimagined in well-publicised exhibitions.
Crowds and long queues for popular shows act as recruiting sergeants for gallery membership schemes. Once marketed as magic carpets for escaping queues and crowds, annual memberships or Friends schemes, costing around £100 - £140 for two people, teeter on the brink of over-expansion from their own success. For international touring blockbusters such as Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto at the V&A, museum membership offered no protection, even on a weekday morning, from lengthy waits to enter the show, and horseshoes of spectators around every display - but in 2024 membership offers the only way to see the sold-out Chanel retrospective. When membership becomes a surrogate show ticket, once exclusive perks such as Member’s Rooms cease to be oases of calm and start fraying under the pressure of numbers.
Around three paid shows a year is the break-even point for membership schemes. And, as gallery-goers progress on their journey to getting their money’s worth, they also pass through a data-rich gateway for galleries to cultivate the donors, legacy-givers and patrons of the future. For galleries memberships offer the initial benefit of funds upfront, but also the prospect of far greater financial support down the line. Tate Collective, the gallery’s £5 ticket scheme for under 25s, is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year, and many of the scheme’s 150,000 members go on to be full Members. Creating a Members’ Room is integral to the National Gallery’s 200th anniversary NG 200 refurbishment, emphasising the key role membership schemes will play in the gallery’s finances going into its third century. It is to be hoped the expansion of membership schemes does not result in a two-tier, airline-style business and economy split between the experiences of gallery goers.
Widening the audience for art was one of the major drivers behind the free entrance campaign of the late 1990s, and the National Gallery’s pay-what-you-wish Friday Lates offers access to its paid shows - currently Frans Hal - for as little as a pound. Established in autumn 2022 as a response to the cost of living crisis, pay-what-you-wish has undeniably increased the number of first-time and younger visitors to the gallery. Nearly one in four Friday evening visitors were attending a paid-for exhibition for the first time. Over the last two paying exhibitions, 23% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art and 22% to Lucian Freud: New Perspectives came to a paying exhibition for the first time. 6% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to New Perspectives and 5% of them to After Impressionism came to the National Gallery and its collection for the first time. About 21% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to After Impressionism were aged 35 to 44, marking an 11% increase from the overall Gallery average during the 2022/23 financial year. Dr Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery, says: 'While our collection and most of our temporary exhibitions are free, the Pay What You Wish scheme continues to enable practically anyone who wants to see our paying exhibitions to do so”.
Outside the capital, the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich has taken the admission price debate one step further, by abolishing the demarcation between seeing Robert and Lisa Sainsbury’s permanent collection for free and paid-for temporary exhibitions. Since February 2023, visitors to the Sainsbury Centre have been issued with a universal ticket for whatever donation they wish to make, including zero. Director Dr Jago Cooper is also encouraging visitors to relate to art objects differently, experiencing their ’life force’, through touching, and also by becoming an exhibit themselves, by sitting in a glass case. These curatorial changes and ‘pay what - and if - you can’ initiatives have increased the number of families and under 30s visiting the gallery.
Cafes and shops are galleries’ third channel of income, and in 2022/23 the National Gallery’s trading income was £3.8m, with a further £9.4m generated by National Gallery Global. Janus-like, galleries are expected to make their mark on the world stage through touring exhibitions and lure high-spending overseas visitors, while simultaneously satisfying domestic demand for participation and social inclusion. Last year 40% of Tate Modern’s 4.4 million visitors were from overseas.
Can a financially necessary ‘exit through the gift shop’ culture genuinely co-exist with a commitment to outreach and inclusion? Personally, I feel the prominence given to cafes and shops in cultural institutions is a barrier to visits from low-income families, whose budgets cannot withstand spontaneous expenditure. A low-cost, all-inclusive pass covering the cloakroom, a snack and small souvenirs could be a solution, so children from all backgrounds can experience enjoying a gallery with their families. Teacher friends in inner London schools also report that the much-vaunted outreach schemes for deprived students can sometimes amount to nothing more than a timed slot in the lunchroom and a dry-as-dust lecture.
But these caveats are tiny and easy to fix compared to the great joy of no-cost entry to works of art held for the nation. Fixed budgets and rising expectations make galleries underwrite a blank cheque, which they can only fulfil through ever-increasing ingenuity and creativity. In 2026, the Art Fund-led campaign for free gallery admission will celebrate its silver anniversary, and this would be an appropriate time to acknowledge and appreciate the continuing efforts of the galleries that make this priceless gift possible.
Twenty-second anniversaries are rarely greeted with fanfare, and marking the abolition of entrance fees for national museum and gallery collections in December 2001 has passed without murmur. But while British gallery-goers take the now-standard free entrance to national treasures for granted, European galleries are raising the price for seeing their country’s collections; in January, the Louvre is increasing its admission fee by €5 to €22, while in Berlin the cost of visiting state museums will rise by €2. From 15th January, entry for one adult to the Altes Museum, the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Bode Museum or the Gemäldegalerie will increase to €12 from €10. Admission to the Hamburger Bahnhof, the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Pergamon or the Neues Museum will rise to €14 from €12. Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, crystallised the dilemma faced by public gallery directors everywhere: “Like many cultural institutions, we are facing very tight budgets which means that we have to increase income and reduce spending”.
With no income from entrance fees, British public galleries are reliant on three main levers for customer revenue: blockbuster exhibitions, membership and retail. Temporary shows with ‘Impressionist’ in the title tend to be crowd-pleasers, while familiar Pre Raphaelite images of wavy-haired ‘stunners’ reproduce well on tote bags and tea towels - little wonder both art movements are regularly surveyed and endlessly reimagined in well-publicised exhibitions.
Crowds and long queues for popular shows act as recruiting sergeants for gallery membership schemes. Once marketed as magic carpets for escaping queues and crowds, annual memberships or Friends schemes, costing around £100 - £140 for two people, teeter on the brink of over-expansion from their own success. For international touring blockbusters such as Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto at the V&A, museum membership offered no protection, even on a weekday morning, from lengthy waits to enter the show, and horseshoes of spectators around every display - but in 2024 membership offers the only way to see the sold-out Chanel retrospective. When membership becomes a surrogate show ticket, once exclusive perks such as Member’s Rooms cease to be oases of calm and start fraying under the pressure of numbers.
Around three paid shows a year is the break-even point for membership schemes. And, as gallery-goers progress on their journey to getting their money’s worth, they also pass through a data-rich gateway for galleries to cultivate the donors, legacy-givers and patrons of the future. For galleries memberships offer the initial benefit of funds upfront, but also the prospect of far greater financial support down the line. Tate Collective, the gallery’s £5 ticket scheme for under 25s, is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year, and many of the scheme’s 150,000 members go on to be full Members. Creating a Members’ Room is integral to the National Gallery’s 200th anniversary NG 200 refurbishment, emphasising the key role membership schemes will play in the gallery’s finances going into its third century. It is to be hoped the expansion of membership schemes does not result in a two-tier, airline-style business and economy split between the experiences of gallery goers.
Widening the audience for art was one of the major drivers behind the free entrance campaign of the late 1990s, and the National Gallery’s pay-what-you-wish Friday Lates offers access to its paid shows - currently Frans Hal - for as little as a pound. Established in autumn 2022 as a response to the cost of living crisis, pay-what-you-wish has undeniably increased the number of first-time and younger visitors to the gallery. Nearly one in four Friday evening visitors were attending a paid-for exhibition for the first time. Over the last two paying exhibitions, 23% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art and 22% to Lucian Freud: New Perspectives came to a paying exhibition for the first time. 6% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to New Perspectives and 5% of them to After Impressionism came to the National Gallery and its collection for the first time. About 21% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to After Impressionism were aged 35 to 44, marking an 11% increase from the overall Gallery average during the 2022/23 financial year. Dr Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery, says: 'While our collection and most of our temporary exhibitions are free, the Pay What You Wish scheme continues to enable practically anyone who wants to see our paying exhibitions to do so”.
Outside the capital, the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich has taken the admission price debate one step further, by abolishing the demarcation between seeing Robert and Lisa Sainsbury’s permanent collection for free and paid-for temporary exhibitions. Since February 2023, visitors to the Sainsbury Centre have been issued with a universal ticket for whatever donation they wish to make, including zero. Director Dr Jago Cooper is also encouraging visitors to relate to art objects differently, experiencing their ’life force’, through touching, and also by becoming an exhibit themselves, by sitting in a glass case. These curatorial changes and ‘pay what - and if - you can’ initiatives have increased the number of families and under 30s visiting the gallery.
Cafes and shops are galleries’ third channel of income, and in 2022/23 the National Gallery’s trading income was £3.8m, with a further £9.4m generated by National Gallery Global. Janus-like, galleries are expected to make their mark on the world stage through touring exhibitions and lure high-spending overseas visitors, while simultaneously satisfying domestic demand for participation and social inclusion. Last year 40% of Tate Modern’s 4.4 million visitors were from overseas.
Can a financially necessary ‘exit through the gift shop’ culture genuinely co-exist with a commitment to outreach and inclusion? Personally, I feel the prominence given to cafes and shops in cultural institutions is a barrier to visits from low-income families, whose budgets cannot withstand spontaneous expenditure. A low-cost, all-inclusive pass covering the cloakroom, a snack and small souvenirs could be a solution, so children from all backgrounds can experience enjoying a gallery with their families. Teacher friends in inner London schools also report that the much-vaunted outreach schemes for deprived students can sometimes amount to nothing more than a timed slot in the lunchroom and a dry-as-dust lecture.
But these caveats are tiny and easy to fix compared to the great joy of no-cost entry to works of art held for the nation. Fixed budgets and rising expectations make galleries underwrite a blank cheque, which they can only fulfil through ever-increasing ingenuity and creativity. In 2026, the Art Fund-led campaign for free gallery admission will celebrate its silver anniversary, and this would be an appropriate time to acknowledge and appreciate the continuing efforts of the galleries that make this priceless gift possible.
Twenty-second anniversaries are rarely greeted with fanfare, and marking the abolition of entrance fees for national museum and gallery collections in December 2001 has passed without murmur. But while British gallery-goers take the now-standard free entrance to national treasures for granted, European galleries are raising the price for seeing their country’s collections; in January, the Louvre is increasing its admission fee by €5 to €22, while in Berlin the cost of visiting state museums will rise by €2. From 15th January, entry for one adult to the Altes Museum, the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Bode Museum or the Gemäldegalerie will increase to €12 from €10. Admission to the Hamburger Bahnhof, the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Pergamon or the Neues Museum will rise to €14 from €12. Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, crystallised the dilemma faced by public gallery directors everywhere: “Like many cultural institutions, we are facing very tight budgets which means that we have to increase income and reduce spending”.
With no income from entrance fees, British public galleries are reliant on three main levers for customer revenue: blockbuster exhibitions, membership and retail. Temporary shows with ‘Impressionist’ in the title tend to be crowd-pleasers, while familiar Pre Raphaelite images of wavy-haired ‘stunners’ reproduce well on tote bags and tea towels - little wonder both art movements are regularly surveyed and endlessly reimagined in well-publicised exhibitions.
Crowds and long queues for popular shows act as recruiting sergeants for gallery membership schemes. Once marketed as magic carpets for escaping queues and crowds, annual memberships or Friends schemes, costing around £100 - £140 for two people, teeter on the brink of over-expansion from their own success. For international touring blockbusters such as Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto at the V&A, museum membership offered no protection, even on a weekday morning, from lengthy waits to enter the show, and horseshoes of spectators around every display - but in 2024 membership offers the only way to see the sold-out Chanel retrospective. When membership becomes a surrogate show ticket, once exclusive perks such as Member’s Rooms cease to be oases of calm and start fraying under the pressure of numbers.
Around three paid shows a year is the break-even point for membership schemes. And, as gallery-goers progress on their journey to getting their money’s worth, they also pass through a data-rich gateway for galleries to cultivate the donors, legacy-givers and patrons of the future. For galleries memberships offer the initial benefit of funds upfront, but also the prospect of far greater financial support down the line. Tate Collective, the gallery’s £5 ticket scheme for under 25s, is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year, and many of the scheme’s 150,000 members go on to be full Members. Creating a Members’ Room is integral to the National Gallery’s 200th anniversary NG 200 refurbishment, emphasising the key role membership schemes will play in the gallery’s finances going into its third century. It is to be hoped the expansion of membership schemes does not result in a two-tier, airline-style business and economy split between the experiences of gallery goers.
Widening the audience for art was one of the major drivers behind the free entrance campaign of the late 1990s, and the National Gallery’s pay-what-you-wish Friday Lates offers access to its paid shows - currently Frans Hal - for as little as a pound. Established in autumn 2022 as a response to the cost of living crisis, pay-what-you-wish has undeniably increased the number of first-time and younger visitors to the gallery. Nearly one in four Friday evening visitors were attending a paid-for exhibition for the first time. Over the last two paying exhibitions, 23% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art and 22% to Lucian Freud: New Perspectives came to a paying exhibition for the first time. 6% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to New Perspectives and 5% of them to After Impressionism came to the National Gallery and its collection for the first time. About 21% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to After Impressionism were aged 35 to 44, marking an 11% increase from the overall Gallery average during the 2022/23 financial year. Dr Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery, says: 'While our collection and most of our temporary exhibitions are free, the Pay What You Wish scheme continues to enable practically anyone who wants to see our paying exhibitions to do so”.
Outside the capital, the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich has taken the admission price debate one step further, by abolishing the demarcation between seeing Robert and Lisa Sainsbury’s permanent collection for free and paid-for temporary exhibitions. Since February 2023, visitors to the Sainsbury Centre have been issued with a universal ticket for whatever donation they wish to make, including zero. Director Dr Jago Cooper is also encouraging visitors to relate to art objects differently, experiencing their ’life force’, through touching, and also by becoming an exhibit themselves, by sitting in a glass case. These curatorial changes and ‘pay what - and if - you can’ initiatives have increased the number of families and under 30s visiting the gallery.
Cafes and shops are galleries’ third channel of income, and in 2022/23 the National Gallery’s trading income was £3.8m, with a further £9.4m generated by National Gallery Global. Janus-like, galleries are expected to make their mark on the world stage through touring exhibitions and lure high-spending overseas visitors, while simultaneously satisfying domestic demand for participation and social inclusion. Last year 40% of Tate Modern’s 4.4 million visitors were from overseas.
Can a financially necessary ‘exit through the gift shop’ culture genuinely co-exist with a commitment to outreach and inclusion? Personally, I feel the prominence given to cafes and shops in cultural institutions is a barrier to visits from low-income families, whose budgets cannot withstand spontaneous expenditure. A low-cost, all-inclusive pass covering the cloakroom, a snack and small souvenirs could be a solution, so children from all backgrounds can experience enjoying a gallery with their families. Teacher friends in inner London schools also report that the much-vaunted outreach schemes for deprived students can sometimes amount to nothing more than a timed slot in the lunchroom and a dry-as-dust lecture.
But these caveats are tiny and easy to fix compared to the great joy of no-cost entry to works of art held for the nation. Fixed budgets and rising expectations make galleries underwrite a blank cheque, which they can only fulfil through ever-increasing ingenuity and creativity. In 2026, the Art Fund-led campaign for free gallery admission will celebrate its silver anniversary, and this would be an appropriate time to acknowledge and appreciate the continuing efforts of the galleries that make this priceless gift possible.
Twenty-second anniversaries are rarely greeted with fanfare, and marking the abolition of entrance fees for national museum and gallery collections in December 2001 has passed without murmur. But while British gallery-goers take the now-standard free entrance to national treasures for granted, European galleries are raising the price for seeing their country’s collections; in January, the Louvre is increasing its admission fee by €5 to €22, while in Berlin the cost of visiting state museums will rise by €2. From 15th January, entry for one adult to the Altes Museum, the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Bode Museum or the Gemäldegalerie will increase to €12 from €10. Admission to the Hamburger Bahnhof, the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Pergamon or the Neues Museum will rise to €14 from €12. Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, crystallised the dilemma faced by public gallery directors everywhere: “Like many cultural institutions, we are facing very tight budgets which means that we have to increase income and reduce spending”.
With no income from entrance fees, British public galleries are reliant on three main levers for customer revenue: blockbuster exhibitions, membership and retail. Temporary shows with ‘Impressionist’ in the title tend to be crowd-pleasers, while familiar Pre Raphaelite images of wavy-haired ‘stunners’ reproduce well on tote bags and tea towels - little wonder both art movements are regularly surveyed and endlessly reimagined in well-publicised exhibitions.
Crowds and long queues for popular shows act as recruiting sergeants for gallery membership schemes. Once marketed as magic carpets for escaping queues and crowds, annual memberships or Friends schemes, costing around £100 - £140 for two people, teeter on the brink of over-expansion from their own success. For international touring blockbusters such as Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto at the V&A, museum membership offered no protection, even on a weekday morning, from lengthy waits to enter the show, and horseshoes of spectators around every display - but in 2024 membership offers the only way to see the sold-out Chanel retrospective. When membership becomes a surrogate show ticket, once exclusive perks such as Member’s Rooms cease to be oases of calm and start fraying under the pressure of numbers.
Around three paid shows a year is the break-even point for membership schemes. And, as gallery-goers progress on their journey to getting their money’s worth, they also pass through a data-rich gateway for galleries to cultivate the donors, legacy-givers and patrons of the future. For galleries memberships offer the initial benefit of funds upfront, but also the prospect of far greater financial support down the line. Tate Collective, the gallery’s £5 ticket scheme for under 25s, is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year, and many of the scheme’s 150,000 members go on to be full Members. Creating a Members’ Room is integral to the National Gallery’s 200th anniversary NG 200 refurbishment, emphasising the key role membership schemes will play in the gallery’s finances going into its third century. It is to be hoped the expansion of membership schemes does not result in a two-tier, airline-style business and economy split between the experiences of gallery goers.
Widening the audience for art was one of the major drivers behind the free entrance campaign of the late 1990s, and the National Gallery’s pay-what-you-wish Friday Lates offers access to its paid shows - currently Frans Hal - for as little as a pound. Established in autumn 2022 as a response to the cost of living crisis, pay-what-you-wish has undeniably increased the number of first-time and younger visitors to the gallery. Nearly one in four Friday evening visitors were attending a paid-for exhibition for the first time. Over the last two paying exhibitions, 23% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art and 22% to Lucian Freud: New Perspectives came to a paying exhibition for the first time. 6% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to New Perspectives and 5% of them to After Impressionism came to the National Gallery and its collection for the first time. About 21% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to After Impressionism were aged 35 to 44, marking an 11% increase from the overall Gallery average during the 2022/23 financial year. Dr Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery, says: 'While our collection and most of our temporary exhibitions are free, the Pay What You Wish scheme continues to enable practically anyone who wants to see our paying exhibitions to do so”.
Outside the capital, the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich has taken the admission price debate one step further, by abolishing the demarcation between seeing Robert and Lisa Sainsbury’s permanent collection for free and paid-for temporary exhibitions. Since February 2023, visitors to the Sainsbury Centre have been issued with a universal ticket for whatever donation they wish to make, including zero. Director Dr Jago Cooper is also encouraging visitors to relate to art objects differently, experiencing their ’life force’, through touching, and also by becoming an exhibit themselves, by sitting in a glass case. These curatorial changes and ‘pay what - and if - you can’ initiatives have increased the number of families and under 30s visiting the gallery.
Cafes and shops are galleries’ third channel of income, and in 2022/23 the National Gallery’s trading income was £3.8m, with a further £9.4m generated by National Gallery Global. Janus-like, galleries are expected to make their mark on the world stage through touring exhibitions and lure high-spending overseas visitors, while simultaneously satisfying domestic demand for participation and social inclusion. Last year 40% of Tate Modern’s 4.4 million visitors were from overseas.
Can a financially necessary ‘exit through the gift shop’ culture genuinely co-exist with a commitment to outreach and inclusion? Personally, I feel the prominence given to cafes and shops in cultural institutions is a barrier to visits from low-income families, whose budgets cannot withstand spontaneous expenditure. A low-cost, all-inclusive pass covering the cloakroom, a snack and small souvenirs could be a solution, so children from all backgrounds can experience enjoying a gallery with their families. Teacher friends in inner London schools also report that the much-vaunted outreach schemes for deprived students can sometimes amount to nothing more than a timed slot in the lunchroom and a dry-as-dust lecture.
But these caveats are tiny and easy to fix compared to the great joy of no-cost entry to works of art held for the nation. Fixed budgets and rising expectations make galleries underwrite a blank cheque, which they can only fulfil through ever-increasing ingenuity and creativity. In 2026, the Art Fund-led campaign for free gallery admission will celebrate its silver anniversary, and this would be an appropriate time to acknowledge and appreciate the continuing efforts of the galleries that make this priceless gift possible.
Twenty-second anniversaries are rarely greeted with fanfare, and marking the abolition of entrance fees for national museum and gallery collections in December 2001 has passed without murmur. But while British gallery-goers take the now-standard free entrance to national treasures for granted, European galleries are raising the price for seeing their country’s collections; in January, the Louvre is increasing its admission fee by €5 to €22, while in Berlin the cost of visiting state museums will rise by €2. From 15th January, entry for one adult to the Altes Museum, the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Bode Museum or the Gemäldegalerie will increase to €12 from €10. Admission to the Hamburger Bahnhof, the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Pergamon or the Neues Museum will rise to €14 from €12. Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, crystallised the dilemma faced by public gallery directors everywhere: “Like many cultural institutions, we are facing very tight budgets which means that we have to increase income and reduce spending”.
With no income from entrance fees, British public galleries are reliant on three main levers for customer revenue: blockbuster exhibitions, membership and retail. Temporary shows with ‘Impressionist’ in the title tend to be crowd-pleasers, while familiar Pre Raphaelite images of wavy-haired ‘stunners’ reproduce well on tote bags and tea towels - little wonder both art movements are regularly surveyed and endlessly reimagined in well-publicised exhibitions.
Crowds and long queues for popular shows act as recruiting sergeants for gallery membership schemes. Once marketed as magic carpets for escaping queues and crowds, annual memberships or Friends schemes, costing around £100 - £140 for two people, teeter on the brink of over-expansion from their own success. For international touring blockbusters such as Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto at the V&A, museum membership offered no protection, even on a weekday morning, from lengthy waits to enter the show, and horseshoes of spectators around every display - but in 2024 membership offers the only way to see the sold-out Chanel retrospective. When membership becomes a surrogate show ticket, once exclusive perks such as Member’s Rooms cease to be oases of calm and start fraying under the pressure of numbers.
Around three paid shows a year is the break-even point for membership schemes. And, as gallery-goers progress on their journey to getting their money’s worth, they also pass through a data-rich gateway for galleries to cultivate the donors, legacy-givers and patrons of the future. For galleries memberships offer the initial benefit of funds upfront, but also the prospect of far greater financial support down the line. Tate Collective, the gallery’s £5 ticket scheme for under 25s, is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year, and many of the scheme’s 150,000 members go on to be full Members. Creating a Members’ Room is integral to the National Gallery’s 200th anniversary NG 200 refurbishment, emphasising the key role membership schemes will play in the gallery’s finances going into its third century. It is to be hoped the expansion of membership schemes does not result in a two-tier, airline-style business and economy split between the experiences of gallery goers.
Widening the audience for art was one of the major drivers behind the free entrance campaign of the late 1990s, and the National Gallery’s pay-what-you-wish Friday Lates offers access to its paid shows - currently Frans Hal - for as little as a pound. Established in autumn 2022 as a response to the cost of living crisis, pay-what-you-wish has undeniably increased the number of first-time and younger visitors to the gallery. Nearly one in four Friday evening visitors were attending a paid-for exhibition for the first time. Over the last two paying exhibitions, 23% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art and 22% to Lucian Freud: New Perspectives came to a paying exhibition for the first time. 6% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to New Perspectives and 5% of them to After Impressionism came to the National Gallery and its collection for the first time. About 21% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to After Impressionism were aged 35 to 44, marking an 11% increase from the overall Gallery average during the 2022/23 financial year. Dr Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery, says: 'While our collection and most of our temporary exhibitions are free, the Pay What You Wish scheme continues to enable practically anyone who wants to see our paying exhibitions to do so”.
Outside the capital, the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich has taken the admission price debate one step further, by abolishing the demarcation between seeing Robert and Lisa Sainsbury’s permanent collection for free and paid-for temporary exhibitions. Since February 2023, visitors to the Sainsbury Centre have been issued with a universal ticket for whatever donation they wish to make, including zero. Director Dr Jago Cooper is also encouraging visitors to relate to art objects differently, experiencing their ’life force’, through touching, and also by becoming an exhibit themselves, by sitting in a glass case. These curatorial changes and ‘pay what - and if - you can’ initiatives have increased the number of families and under 30s visiting the gallery.
Cafes and shops are galleries’ third channel of income, and in 2022/23 the National Gallery’s trading income was £3.8m, with a further £9.4m generated by National Gallery Global. Janus-like, galleries are expected to make their mark on the world stage through touring exhibitions and lure high-spending overseas visitors, while simultaneously satisfying domestic demand for participation and social inclusion. Last year 40% of Tate Modern’s 4.4 million visitors were from overseas.
Can a financially necessary ‘exit through the gift shop’ culture genuinely co-exist with a commitment to outreach and inclusion? Personally, I feel the prominence given to cafes and shops in cultural institutions is a barrier to visits from low-income families, whose budgets cannot withstand spontaneous expenditure. A low-cost, all-inclusive pass covering the cloakroom, a snack and small souvenirs could be a solution, so children from all backgrounds can experience enjoying a gallery with their families. Teacher friends in inner London schools also report that the much-vaunted outreach schemes for deprived students can sometimes amount to nothing more than a timed slot in the lunchroom and a dry-as-dust lecture.
But these caveats are tiny and easy to fix compared to the great joy of no-cost entry to works of art held for the nation. Fixed budgets and rising expectations make galleries underwrite a blank cheque, which they can only fulfil through ever-increasing ingenuity and creativity. In 2026, the Art Fund-led campaign for free gallery admission will celebrate its silver anniversary, and this would be an appropriate time to acknowledge and appreciate the continuing efforts of the galleries that make this priceless gift possible.
Twenty-second anniversaries are rarely greeted with fanfare, and marking the abolition of entrance fees for national museum and gallery collections in December 2001 has passed without murmur. But while British gallery-goers take the now-standard free entrance to national treasures for granted, European galleries are raising the price for seeing their country’s collections; in January, the Louvre is increasing its admission fee by €5 to €22, while in Berlin the cost of visiting state museums will rise by €2. From 15th January, entry for one adult to the Altes Museum, the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Bode Museum or the Gemäldegalerie will increase to €12 from €10. Admission to the Hamburger Bahnhof, the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Pergamon or the Neues Museum will rise to €14 from €12. Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, crystallised the dilemma faced by public gallery directors everywhere: “Like many cultural institutions, we are facing very tight budgets which means that we have to increase income and reduce spending”.
With no income from entrance fees, British public galleries are reliant on three main levers for customer revenue: blockbuster exhibitions, membership and retail. Temporary shows with ‘Impressionist’ in the title tend to be crowd-pleasers, while familiar Pre Raphaelite images of wavy-haired ‘stunners’ reproduce well on tote bags and tea towels - little wonder both art movements are regularly surveyed and endlessly reimagined in well-publicised exhibitions.
Crowds and long queues for popular shows act as recruiting sergeants for gallery membership schemes. Once marketed as magic carpets for escaping queues and crowds, annual memberships or Friends schemes, costing around £100 - £140 for two people, teeter on the brink of over-expansion from their own success. For international touring blockbusters such as Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto at the V&A, museum membership offered no protection, even on a weekday morning, from lengthy waits to enter the show, and horseshoes of spectators around every display - but in 2024 membership offers the only way to see the sold-out Chanel retrospective. When membership becomes a surrogate show ticket, once exclusive perks such as Member’s Rooms cease to be oases of calm and start fraying under the pressure of numbers.
Around three paid shows a year is the break-even point for membership schemes. And, as gallery-goers progress on their journey to getting their money’s worth, they also pass through a data-rich gateway for galleries to cultivate the donors, legacy-givers and patrons of the future. For galleries memberships offer the initial benefit of funds upfront, but also the prospect of far greater financial support down the line. Tate Collective, the gallery’s £5 ticket scheme for under 25s, is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year, and many of the scheme’s 150,000 members go on to be full Members. Creating a Members’ Room is integral to the National Gallery’s 200th anniversary NG 200 refurbishment, emphasising the key role membership schemes will play in the gallery’s finances going into its third century. It is to be hoped the expansion of membership schemes does not result in a two-tier, airline-style business and economy split between the experiences of gallery goers.
Widening the audience for art was one of the major drivers behind the free entrance campaign of the late 1990s, and the National Gallery’s pay-what-you-wish Friday Lates offers access to its paid shows - currently Frans Hal - for as little as a pound. Established in autumn 2022 as a response to the cost of living crisis, pay-what-you-wish has undeniably increased the number of first-time and younger visitors to the gallery. Nearly one in four Friday evening visitors were attending a paid-for exhibition for the first time. Over the last two paying exhibitions, 23% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art and 22% to Lucian Freud: New Perspectives came to a paying exhibition for the first time. 6% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to New Perspectives and 5% of them to After Impressionism came to the National Gallery and its collection for the first time. About 21% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to After Impressionism were aged 35 to 44, marking an 11% increase from the overall Gallery average during the 2022/23 financial year. Dr Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery, says: 'While our collection and most of our temporary exhibitions are free, the Pay What You Wish scheme continues to enable practically anyone who wants to see our paying exhibitions to do so”.
Outside the capital, the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich has taken the admission price debate one step further, by abolishing the demarcation between seeing Robert and Lisa Sainsbury’s permanent collection for free and paid-for temporary exhibitions. Since February 2023, visitors to the Sainsbury Centre have been issued with a universal ticket for whatever donation they wish to make, including zero. Director Dr Jago Cooper is also encouraging visitors to relate to art objects differently, experiencing their ’life force’, through touching, and also by becoming an exhibit themselves, by sitting in a glass case. These curatorial changes and ‘pay what - and if - you can’ initiatives have increased the number of families and under 30s visiting the gallery.
Cafes and shops are galleries’ third channel of income, and in 2022/23 the National Gallery’s trading income was £3.8m, with a further £9.4m generated by National Gallery Global. Janus-like, galleries are expected to make their mark on the world stage through touring exhibitions and lure high-spending overseas visitors, while simultaneously satisfying domestic demand for participation and social inclusion. Last year 40% of Tate Modern’s 4.4 million visitors were from overseas.
Can a financially necessary ‘exit through the gift shop’ culture genuinely co-exist with a commitment to outreach and inclusion? Personally, I feel the prominence given to cafes and shops in cultural institutions is a barrier to visits from low-income families, whose budgets cannot withstand spontaneous expenditure. A low-cost, all-inclusive pass covering the cloakroom, a snack and small souvenirs could be a solution, so children from all backgrounds can experience enjoying a gallery with their families. Teacher friends in inner London schools also report that the much-vaunted outreach schemes for deprived students can sometimes amount to nothing more than a timed slot in the lunchroom and a dry-as-dust lecture.
But these caveats are tiny and easy to fix compared to the great joy of no-cost entry to works of art held for the nation. Fixed budgets and rising expectations make galleries underwrite a blank cheque, which they can only fulfil through ever-increasing ingenuity and creativity. In 2026, the Art Fund-led campaign for free gallery admission will celebrate its silver anniversary, and this would be an appropriate time to acknowledge and appreciate the continuing efforts of the galleries that make this priceless gift possible.
Twenty-second anniversaries are rarely greeted with fanfare, and marking the abolition of entrance fees for national museum and gallery collections in December 2001 has passed without murmur. But while British gallery-goers take the now-standard free entrance to national treasures for granted, European galleries are raising the price for seeing their country’s collections; in January, the Louvre is increasing its admission fee by €5 to €22, while in Berlin the cost of visiting state museums will rise by €2. From 15th January, entry for one adult to the Altes Museum, the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Bode Museum or the Gemäldegalerie will increase to €12 from €10. Admission to the Hamburger Bahnhof, the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Pergamon or the Neues Museum will rise to €14 from €12. Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, crystallised the dilemma faced by public gallery directors everywhere: “Like many cultural institutions, we are facing very tight budgets which means that we have to increase income and reduce spending”.
With no income from entrance fees, British public galleries are reliant on three main levers for customer revenue: blockbuster exhibitions, membership and retail. Temporary shows with ‘Impressionist’ in the title tend to be crowd-pleasers, while familiar Pre Raphaelite images of wavy-haired ‘stunners’ reproduce well on tote bags and tea towels - little wonder both art movements are regularly surveyed and endlessly reimagined in well-publicised exhibitions.
Crowds and long queues for popular shows act as recruiting sergeants for gallery membership schemes. Once marketed as magic carpets for escaping queues and crowds, annual memberships or Friends schemes, costing around £100 - £140 for two people, teeter on the brink of over-expansion from their own success. For international touring blockbusters such as Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto at the V&A, museum membership offered no protection, even on a weekday morning, from lengthy waits to enter the show, and horseshoes of spectators around every display - but in 2024 membership offers the only way to see the sold-out Chanel retrospective. When membership becomes a surrogate show ticket, once exclusive perks such as Member’s Rooms cease to be oases of calm and start fraying under the pressure of numbers.
Around three paid shows a year is the break-even point for membership schemes. And, as gallery-goers progress on their journey to getting their money’s worth, they also pass through a data-rich gateway for galleries to cultivate the donors, legacy-givers and patrons of the future. For galleries memberships offer the initial benefit of funds upfront, but also the prospect of far greater financial support down the line. Tate Collective, the gallery’s £5 ticket scheme for under 25s, is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year, and many of the scheme’s 150,000 members go on to be full Members. Creating a Members’ Room is integral to the National Gallery’s 200th anniversary NG 200 refurbishment, emphasising the key role membership schemes will play in the gallery’s finances going into its third century. It is to be hoped the expansion of membership schemes does not result in a two-tier, airline-style business and economy split between the experiences of gallery goers.
Widening the audience for art was one of the major drivers behind the free entrance campaign of the late 1990s, and the National Gallery’s pay-what-you-wish Friday Lates offers access to its paid shows - currently Frans Hal - for as little as a pound. Established in autumn 2022 as a response to the cost of living crisis, pay-what-you-wish has undeniably increased the number of first-time and younger visitors to the gallery. Nearly one in four Friday evening visitors were attending a paid-for exhibition for the first time. Over the last two paying exhibitions, 23% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art and 22% to Lucian Freud: New Perspectives came to a paying exhibition for the first time. 6% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to New Perspectives and 5% of them to After Impressionism came to the National Gallery and its collection for the first time. About 21% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to After Impressionism were aged 35 to 44, marking an 11% increase from the overall Gallery average during the 2022/23 financial year. Dr Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery, says: 'While our collection and most of our temporary exhibitions are free, the Pay What You Wish scheme continues to enable practically anyone who wants to see our paying exhibitions to do so”.
Outside the capital, the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich has taken the admission price debate one step further, by abolishing the demarcation between seeing Robert and Lisa Sainsbury’s permanent collection for free and paid-for temporary exhibitions. Since February 2023, visitors to the Sainsbury Centre have been issued with a universal ticket for whatever donation they wish to make, including zero. Director Dr Jago Cooper is also encouraging visitors to relate to art objects differently, experiencing their ’life force’, through touching, and also by becoming an exhibit themselves, by sitting in a glass case. These curatorial changes and ‘pay what - and if - you can’ initiatives have increased the number of families and under 30s visiting the gallery.
Cafes and shops are galleries’ third channel of income, and in 2022/23 the National Gallery’s trading income was £3.8m, with a further £9.4m generated by National Gallery Global. Janus-like, galleries are expected to make their mark on the world stage through touring exhibitions and lure high-spending overseas visitors, while simultaneously satisfying domestic demand for participation and social inclusion. Last year 40% of Tate Modern’s 4.4 million visitors were from overseas.
Can a financially necessary ‘exit through the gift shop’ culture genuinely co-exist with a commitment to outreach and inclusion? Personally, I feel the prominence given to cafes and shops in cultural institutions is a barrier to visits from low-income families, whose budgets cannot withstand spontaneous expenditure. A low-cost, all-inclusive pass covering the cloakroom, a snack and small souvenirs could be a solution, so children from all backgrounds can experience enjoying a gallery with their families. Teacher friends in inner London schools also report that the much-vaunted outreach schemes for deprived students can sometimes amount to nothing more than a timed slot in the lunchroom and a dry-as-dust lecture.
But these caveats are tiny and easy to fix compared to the great joy of no-cost entry to works of art held for the nation. Fixed budgets and rising expectations make galleries underwrite a blank cheque, which they can only fulfil through ever-increasing ingenuity and creativity. In 2026, the Art Fund-led campaign for free gallery admission will celebrate its silver anniversary, and this would be an appropriate time to acknowledge and appreciate the continuing efforts of the galleries that make this priceless gift possible.
Twenty-second anniversaries are rarely greeted with fanfare, and marking the abolition of entrance fees for national museum and gallery collections in December 2001 has passed without murmur. But while British gallery-goers take the now-standard free entrance to national treasures for granted, European galleries are raising the price for seeing their country’s collections; in January, the Louvre is increasing its admission fee by €5 to €22, while in Berlin the cost of visiting state museums will rise by €2. From 15th January, entry for one adult to the Altes Museum, the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Bode Museum or the Gemäldegalerie will increase to €12 from €10. Admission to the Hamburger Bahnhof, the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Pergamon or the Neues Museum will rise to €14 from €12. Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, crystallised the dilemma faced by public gallery directors everywhere: “Like many cultural institutions, we are facing very tight budgets which means that we have to increase income and reduce spending”.
With no income from entrance fees, British public galleries are reliant on three main levers for customer revenue: blockbuster exhibitions, membership and retail. Temporary shows with ‘Impressionist’ in the title tend to be crowd-pleasers, while familiar Pre Raphaelite images of wavy-haired ‘stunners’ reproduce well on tote bags and tea towels - little wonder both art movements are regularly surveyed and endlessly reimagined in well-publicised exhibitions.
Crowds and long queues for popular shows act as recruiting sergeants for gallery membership schemes. Once marketed as magic carpets for escaping queues and crowds, annual memberships or Friends schemes, costing around £100 - £140 for two people, teeter on the brink of over-expansion from their own success. For international touring blockbusters such as Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto at the V&A, museum membership offered no protection, even on a weekday morning, from lengthy waits to enter the show, and horseshoes of spectators around every display - but in 2024 membership offers the only way to see the sold-out Chanel retrospective. When membership becomes a surrogate show ticket, once exclusive perks such as Member’s Rooms cease to be oases of calm and start fraying under the pressure of numbers.
Around three paid shows a year is the break-even point for membership schemes. And, as gallery-goers progress on their journey to getting their money’s worth, they also pass through a data-rich gateway for galleries to cultivate the donors, legacy-givers and patrons of the future. For galleries memberships offer the initial benefit of funds upfront, but also the prospect of far greater financial support down the line. Tate Collective, the gallery’s £5 ticket scheme for under 25s, is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year, and many of the scheme’s 150,000 members go on to be full Members. Creating a Members’ Room is integral to the National Gallery’s 200th anniversary NG 200 refurbishment, emphasising the key role membership schemes will play in the gallery’s finances going into its third century. It is to be hoped the expansion of membership schemes does not result in a two-tier, airline-style business and economy split between the experiences of gallery goers.
Widening the audience for art was one of the major drivers behind the free entrance campaign of the late 1990s, and the National Gallery’s pay-what-you-wish Friday Lates offers access to its paid shows - currently Frans Hal - for as little as a pound. Established in autumn 2022 as a response to the cost of living crisis, pay-what-you-wish has undeniably increased the number of first-time and younger visitors to the gallery. Nearly one in four Friday evening visitors were attending a paid-for exhibition for the first time. Over the last two paying exhibitions, 23% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art and 22% to Lucian Freud: New Perspectives came to a paying exhibition for the first time. 6% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to New Perspectives and 5% of them to After Impressionism came to the National Gallery and its collection for the first time. About 21% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to After Impressionism were aged 35 to 44, marking an 11% increase from the overall Gallery average during the 2022/23 financial year. Dr Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery, says: 'While our collection and most of our temporary exhibitions are free, the Pay What You Wish scheme continues to enable practically anyone who wants to see our paying exhibitions to do so”.
Outside the capital, the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich has taken the admission price debate one step further, by abolishing the demarcation between seeing Robert and Lisa Sainsbury’s permanent collection for free and paid-for temporary exhibitions. Since February 2023, visitors to the Sainsbury Centre have been issued with a universal ticket for whatever donation they wish to make, including zero. Director Dr Jago Cooper is also encouraging visitors to relate to art objects differently, experiencing their ’life force’, through touching, and also by becoming an exhibit themselves, by sitting in a glass case. These curatorial changes and ‘pay what - and if - you can’ initiatives have increased the number of families and under 30s visiting the gallery.
Cafes and shops are galleries’ third channel of income, and in 2022/23 the National Gallery’s trading income was £3.8m, with a further £9.4m generated by National Gallery Global. Janus-like, galleries are expected to make their mark on the world stage through touring exhibitions and lure high-spending overseas visitors, while simultaneously satisfying domestic demand for participation and social inclusion. Last year 40% of Tate Modern’s 4.4 million visitors were from overseas.
Can a financially necessary ‘exit through the gift shop’ culture genuinely co-exist with a commitment to outreach and inclusion? Personally, I feel the prominence given to cafes and shops in cultural institutions is a barrier to visits from low-income families, whose budgets cannot withstand spontaneous expenditure. A low-cost, all-inclusive pass covering the cloakroom, a snack and small souvenirs could be a solution, so children from all backgrounds can experience enjoying a gallery with their families. Teacher friends in inner London schools also report that the much-vaunted outreach schemes for deprived students can sometimes amount to nothing more than a timed slot in the lunchroom and a dry-as-dust lecture.
But these caveats are tiny and easy to fix compared to the great joy of no-cost entry to works of art held for the nation. Fixed budgets and rising expectations make galleries underwrite a blank cheque, which they can only fulfil through ever-increasing ingenuity and creativity. In 2026, the Art Fund-led campaign for free gallery admission will celebrate its silver anniversary, and this would be an appropriate time to acknowledge and appreciate the continuing efforts of the galleries that make this priceless gift possible.
Twenty-second anniversaries are rarely greeted with fanfare, and marking the abolition of entrance fees for national museum and gallery collections in December 2001 has passed without murmur. But while British gallery-goers take the now-standard free entrance to national treasures for granted, European galleries are raising the price for seeing their country’s collections; in January, the Louvre is increasing its admission fee by €5 to €22, while in Berlin the cost of visiting state museums will rise by €2. From 15th January, entry for one adult to the Altes Museum, the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Bode Museum or the Gemäldegalerie will increase to €12 from €10. Admission to the Hamburger Bahnhof, the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Pergamon or the Neues Museum will rise to €14 from €12. Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, crystallised the dilemma faced by public gallery directors everywhere: “Like many cultural institutions, we are facing very tight budgets which means that we have to increase income and reduce spending”.
With no income from entrance fees, British public galleries are reliant on three main levers for customer revenue: blockbuster exhibitions, membership and retail. Temporary shows with ‘Impressionist’ in the title tend to be crowd-pleasers, while familiar Pre Raphaelite images of wavy-haired ‘stunners’ reproduce well on tote bags and tea towels - little wonder both art movements are regularly surveyed and endlessly reimagined in well-publicised exhibitions.
Crowds and long queues for popular shows act as recruiting sergeants for gallery membership schemes. Once marketed as magic carpets for escaping queues and crowds, annual memberships or Friends schemes, costing around £100 - £140 for two people, teeter on the brink of over-expansion from their own success. For international touring blockbusters such as Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto at the V&A, museum membership offered no protection, even on a weekday morning, from lengthy waits to enter the show, and horseshoes of spectators around every display - but in 2024 membership offers the only way to see the sold-out Chanel retrospective. When membership becomes a surrogate show ticket, once exclusive perks such as Member’s Rooms cease to be oases of calm and start fraying under the pressure of numbers.
Around three paid shows a year is the break-even point for membership schemes. And, as gallery-goers progress on their journey to getting their money’s worth, they also pass through a data-rich gateway for galleries to cultivate the donors, legacy-givers and patrons of the future. For galleries memberships offer the initial benefit of funds upfront, but also the prospect of far greater financial support down the line. Tate Collective, the gallery’s £5 ticket scheme for under 25s, is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year, and many of the scheme’s 150,000 members go on to be full Members. Creating a Members’ Room is integral to the National Gallery’s 200th anniversary NG 200 refurbishment, emphasising the key role membership schemes will play in the gallery’s finances going into its third century. It is to be hoped the expansion of membership schemes does not result in a two-tier, airline-style business and economy split between the experiences of gallery goers.
Widening the audience for art was one of the major drivers behind the free entrance campaign of the late 1990s, and the National Gallery’s pay-what-you-wish Friday Lates offers access to its paid shows - currently Frans Hal - for as little as a pound. Established in autumn 2022 as a response to the cost of living crisis, pay-what-you-wish has undeniably increased the number of first-time and younger visitors to the gallery. Nearly one in four Friday evening visitors were attending a paid-for exhibition for the first time. Over the last two paying exhibitions, 23% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art and 22% to Lucian Freud: New Perspectives came to a paying exhibition for the first time. 6% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to New Perspectives and 5% of them to After Impressionism came to the National Gallery and its collection for the first time. About 21% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to After Impressionism were aged 35 to 44, marking an 11% increase from the overall Gallery average during the 2022/23 financial year. Dr Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery, says: 'While our collection and most of our temporary exhibitions are free, the Pay What You Wish scheme continues to enable practically anyone who wants to see our paying exhibitions to do so”.
Outside the capital, the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich has taken the admission price debate one step further, by abolishing the demarcation between seeing Robert and Lisa Sainsbury’s permanent collection for free and paid-for temporary exhibitions. Since February 2023, visitors to the Sainsbury Centre have been issued with a universal ticket for whatever donation they wish to make, including zero. Director Dr Jago Cooper is also encouraging visitors to relate to art objects differently, experiencing their ’life force’, through touching, and also by becoming an exhibit themselves, by sitting in a glass case. These curatorial changes and ‘pay what - and if - you can’ initiatives have increased the number of families and under 30s visiting the gallery.
Cafes and shops are galleries’ third channel of income, and in 2022/23 the National Gallery’s trading income was £3.8m, with a further £9.4m generated by National Gallery Global. Janus-like, galleries are expected to make their mark on the world stage through touring exhibitions and lure high-spending overseas visitors, while simultaneously satisfying domestic demand for participation and social inclusion. Last year 40% of Tate Modern’s 4.4 million visitors were from overseas.
Can a financially necessary ‘exit through the gift shop’ culture genuinely co-exist with a commitment to outreach and inclusion? Personally, I feel the prominence given to cafes and shops in cultural institutions is a barrier to visits from low-income families, whose budgets cannot withstand spontaneous expenditure. A low-cost, all-inclusive pass covering the cloakroom, a snack and small souvenirs could be a solution, so children from all backgrounds can experience enjoying a gallery with their families. Teacher friends in inner London schools also report that the much-vaunted outreach schemes for deprived students can sometimes amount to nothing more than a timed slot in the lunchroom and a dry-as-dust lecture.
But these caveats are tiny and easy to fix compared to the great joy of no-cost entry to works of art held for the nation. Fixed budgets and rising expectations make galleries underwrite a blank cheque, which they can only fulfil through ever-increasing ingenuity and creativity. In 2026, the Art Fund-led campaign for free gallery admission will celebrate its silver anniversary, and this would be an appropriate time to acknowledge and appreciate the continuing efforts of the galleries that make this priceless gift possible.
Twenty-second anniversaries are rarely greeted with fanfare, and marking the abolition of entrance fees for national museum and gallery collections in December 2001 has passed without murmur. But while British gallery-goers take the now-standard free entrance to national treasures for granted, European galleries are raising the price for seeing their country’s collections; in January, the Louvre is increasing its admission fee by €5 to €22, while in Berlin the cost of visiting state museums will rise by €2. From 15th January, entry for one adult to the Altes Museum, the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Bode Museum or the Gemäldegalerie will increase to €12 from €10. Admission to the Hamburger Bahnhof, the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Pergamon or the Neues Museum will rise to €14 from €12. Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, crystallised the dilemma faced by public gallery directors everywhere: “Like many cultural institutions, we are facing very tight budgets which means that we have to increase income and reduce spending”.
With no income from entrance fees, British public galleries are reliant on three main levers for customer revenue: blockbuster exhibitions, membership and retail. Temporary shows with ‘Impressionist’ in the title tend to be crowd-pleasers, while familiar Pre Raphaelite images of wavy-haired ‘stunners’ reproduce well on tote bags and tea towels - little wonder both art movements are regularly surveyed and endlessly reimagined in well-publicised exhibitions.
Crowds and long queues for popular shows act as recruiting sergeants for gallery membership schemes. Once marketed as magic carpets for escaping queues and crowds, annual memberships or Friends schemes, costing around £100 - £140 for two people, teeter on the brink of over-expansion from their own success. For international touring blockbusters such as Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto at the V&A, museum membership offered no protection, even on a weekday morning, from lengthy waits to enter the show, and horseshoes of spectators around every display - but in 2024 membership offers the only way to see the sold-out Chanel retrospective. When membership becomes a surrogate show ticket, once exclusive perks such as Member’s Rooms cease to be oases of calm and start fraying under the pressure of numbers.
Around three paid shows a year is the break-even point for membership schemes. And, as gallery-goers progress on their journey to getting their money’s worth, they also pass through a data-rich gateway for galleries to cultivate the donors, legacy-givers and patrons of the future. For galleries memberships offer the initial benefit of funds upfront, but also the prospect of far greater financial support down the line. Tate Collective, the gallery’s £5 ticket scheme for under 25s, is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year, and many of the scheme’s 150,000 members go on to be full Members. Creating a Members’ Room is integral to the National Gallery’s 200th anniversary NG 200 refurbishment, emphasising the key role membership schemes will play in the gallery’s finances going into its third century. It is to be hoped the expansion of membership schemes does not result in a two-tier, airline-style business and economy split between the experiences of gallery goers.
Widening the audience for art was one of the major drivers behind the free entrance campaign of the late 1990s, and the National Gallery’s pay-what-you-wish Friday Lates offers access to its paid shows - currently Frans Hal - for as little as a pound. Established in autumn 2022 as a response to the cost of living crisis, pay-what-you-wish has undeniably increased the number of first-time and younger visitors to the gallery. Nearly one in four Friday evening visitors were attending a paid-for exhibition for the first time. Over the last two paying exhibitions, 23% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art and 22% to Lucian Freud: New Perspectives came to a paying exhibition for the first time. 6% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to New Perspectives and 5% of them to After Impressionism came to the National Gallery and its collection for the first time. About 21% of pay-what-you-wish visitors to After Impressionism were aged 35 to 44, marking an 11% increase from the overall Gallery average during the 2022/23 financial year. Dr Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery, says: 'While our collection and most of our temporary exhibitions are free, the Pay What You Wish scheme continues to enable practically anyone who wants to see our paying exhibitions to do so”.
Outside the capital, the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich has taken the admission price debate one step further, by abolishing the demarcation between seeing Robert and Lisa Sainsbury’s permanent collection for free and paid-for temporary exhibitions. Since February 2023, visitors to the Sainsbury Centre have been issued with a universal ticket for whatever donation they wish to make, including zero. Director Dr Jago Cooper is also encouraging visitors to relate to art objects differently, experiencing their ’life force’, through touching, and also by becoming an exhibit themselves, by sitting in a glass case. These curatorial changes and ‘pay what - and if - you can’ initiatives have increased the number of families and under 30s visiting the gallery.
Cafes and shops are galleries’ third channel of income, and in 2022/23 the National Gallery’s trading income was £3.8m, with a further £9.4m generated by National Gallery Global. Janus-like, galleries are expected to make their mark on the world stage through touring exhibitions and lure high-spending overseas visitors, while simultaneously satisfying domestic demand for participation and social inclusion. Last year 40% of Tate Modern’s 4.4 million visitors were from overseas.
Can a financially necessary ‘exit through the gift shop’ culture genuinely co-exist with a commitment to outreach and inclusion? Personally, I feel the prominence given to cafes and shops in cultural institutions is a barrier to visits from low-income families, whose budgets cannot withstand spontaneous expenditure. A low-cost, all-inclusive pass covering the cloakroom, a snack and small souvenirs could be a solution, so children from all backgrounds can experience enjoying a gallery with their families. Teacher friends in inner London schools also report that the much-vaunted outreach schemes for deprived students can sometimes amount to nothing more than a timed slot in the lunchroom and a dry-as-dust lecture.
But these caveats are tiny and easy to fix compared to the great joy of no-cost entry to works of art held for the nation. Fixed budgets and rising expectations make galleries underwrite a blank cheque, which they can only fulfil through ever-increasing ingenuity and creativity. In 2026, the Art Fund-led campaign for free gallery admission will celebrate its silver anniversary, and this would be an appropriate time to acknowledge and appreciate the continuing efforts of the galleries that make this priceless gift possible.
