Museum Admission Fees

On July 1, 2004 the Smith College Museum of Art began charging admission to the public for the first time. The decision was made after considerable internal discussion, in order to maintain the Museum’s current public hours. Without instituting an admission charge, the galleries would have been open only four hours a day during the academic year, and the Museum would have had to close entirely during the summer and January, when classes are not in session. Friends of the Museum will receive free admission as a benefit of membership. Smith and Five College students and faculty, and Smith staff members, will also be admitted without charge. School group visits in 2004–05 will be underwritten by a gift from a Museum supporter, and the staff hopes to identify other underwriters for subsequent years.

When the Museum developed its current strategic plan in 2000–01, it reaffirmed that serving the general public is as central to its mission as serving the Smith and Five College communities. However, the convergence of rising operating costs and a decline in funding from both the College and traditional granting sources has created a need to make hard choices. The Museum will continue to offer a full slate of programs for adults and families, to host visits for primary and secondary schools, and to maintain its usual conservation and curatorial functions, but it is asking visitors to help meet the expense of guarding the galleries. Operating the Museum costs more than $35 per visitor, so admission fees of $5 or less represent only a small portion of the burden. The cost of guards alone is over $100 per hour.

“We faced a difficult choice between finding a new income source and reducing public hours by 40%,” says Margi Caplan, membership and marketing director. “After careful consideration and much soul-searching, the staff determined that instituting an admission fee but maintaining full open hours would be the less painful option.”

The Museum remains committed to making access as universal as possible and has preserved several ways of seeing the Museum for free. “Our intention is to enable anyone to come, regardless of his or her financial ability,” says Suzannah Fabing, former director and chief curator. The Museum will offer free admission the first Saturday morning of each month from 10:00 to noon. A limited number of passes to the Museum will be available at the Forbes Library, located just two blocks away. These passes, which can be checked out like a book, will provide free admission to anyone with a library card from Forbes or any library with reciprocal borrowing privileges (which includes most libraries in western Massachusetts).

Although art museums across the nation are suffering from the same financial pressures, SCMA is particularly affected because of college-wide budget tightening at Smith. The Museum’s college funding has been cut by 7.9% for the coming year, which will also necessitate staff reductions. General Operating Support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal government program that helped fund guards in the past, has recently been eliminated, and funds for the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which also previously helped support the cost of guards, have been drastically reduced by the state legislature.

“Even with an admission fee, we hope visitors will see a visit to the Museum for the bargain it is,” Caplan says, “particularly when compared to the cost of tickets for comparable cultural experiences—a play, a concert, or another museum of our scope. And free admission is yet another benefit to being a Friend.”