41–50 of 69 posts
From Wikipedia, the Guggenheim can apparently show about 6% of it's collection at any one point. Seems like there's a fairly obvious way to generate more money there. But no, it's the union's fault they have money problems.
If you're interested, see https://news.artnet.com/art-world/brauer-museum-controversia... for a recent example.
The focus of the major American Museum has become the same focus that, unfortunately, has overtaken a lot of other non-profits. It's not to show a collection. It's to make money. And they dump a lot of resources in the marketing, fundraising and consultants, and blame 'wages' of the people who make 45k with, maybe, 2% yearly increases, when they jack up the prices.
Until a few years ago you could walk into the NY public museums and just ask them to give you a ticket for free (or for one dollar), which I think was reasonable. They didn't advertise this "trick" so most people still paid the recommended fee but as someone who visited the museums quite a lot I found it really nice. They recently changed it so that only NY+NJ residents can choose their own ticket price.
Facilities like the Udvar-Hazy Center for Air & Space charge for parking, but admission is free. If you're in Downtown D.C., this matters much less of course.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get "conservation" in the terms of art. They should keep art safe so that someday it may be seen? Why not let it be seen now? I bet they could even lease out a fair amount of it with requirements of maintenance and some amount of public accessibility. That alone would drive down their costs at least.
Lease it to whom? All the other museums are in the same scenario. There's more art of value than there is space to show it, so we rotate stuff in and out with special exhibitions and whatnot.
I’m not sure what the difference is between something like the Guggenheim in NYC or the Tate Modern in London, but you can walk into the Tate without having to pay anything at all. Is there lots of government funding in the UK for the museum sector that doesn’t exist in the states?
So, the epiphany to have here, is that for many countries — but not the US! — historical cultural sites and artefacts (not just museums, but also things like monuments and land features) are a large draw for foreign tourists. People fly to Paris just to visit the Louvre ; people visit Egypt just to see the pyramids ; etc. These "historied" cities have built up powerful hospitality industries around foreign visitors t…
DC similarly has a huge number of museums that draw in foreign tourists, it's just that they're almost all Smithsonian museums, which are free to everyone.
From Wikipedia, the Guggenheim can apparently show about 6% of it's collection at any one point. Seems like there's a fairly obvious way to generate more money there. But no, it's the union's fault they have money problems.
Deaccession is controversial and often legally gray due to stipulations by donors that work is never to be sold. If you're interested, see https://news.artnet.com/art-world/brauer-museum-controversia... for a recent example.
I’m not sure what the difference is between something like the Guggenheim in NYC or the Tate Modern in London, but you can walk into the Tate without having to pay anything at all. Is there lots of government funding in the UK for the museum sector that doesn’t exist in the states?
So, the epiphany to have here, is that for many countries — but not the US! — historical cultural sites and artefacts (not just museums, but also things like monuments and land features) are a large draw for foreign tourists. People fly to Paris just to visit the Louvre ; people visit Egypt just to see the pyramids ; etc. These "historied" cities have built up powerful hospitality industries around foreign visitors t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, the epiphany to have here, is that for many countries — but not the US! — historical cultural sites and artefacts (not just museums, but also things like monuments and land features) are a large draw for foreign tourists. People fly to Paris just to visit the Louvre ; people visit Egypt just to see the pyramids ; etc. These "historied" cities have built up powerful hospitality industries around foreign visitors t…
I kind of disagree with your premise here, at least in some specifics. MoMA and The Met in NYC absolutely do have a draw for foreign tourists, and are full of them. Both require tourists to pay the full ticket price to get in. LA too has serious museums that attract international tourists. DC similarly has a huge number of museums that draw in foreign tourists, it's just that they're almost all Smithsonian museums, w…
Consider the "gap-year" 20-something who "travels Europe" by just staying in each country a few days to visit the cultural sites while staying at a hostel. To such a person, the equivalent cultural sites in the US are basically inaccessible. (Not that such a person is the sort of high-hospitality-ROI that a city would plan around; but their presence as a "keystone species" indicates that a hospitality-loss-led economy is functioning the way it should.)