It’s a grim picture for museum lovers as entry fees climb

Prices at American museums, those guardians of civilization, are getting downright uncivilized. It’s not just that regular entrance fees are edging up, it’s the extra charges: upward of $20 per person for special exhibits on Impressionists, antiquities and other blockbuster subjects.

Sometimes it seems the treasure I’ve deposited at the museum’s box office rivals what’s on the exhibit shelves -- and never more so since I journeyed to Hong Kong and Singapore last month, where the exquisite museums I visited charged well under $2 per person.

What’s wrong with this picture? Quite a bit, it turns out.

In the last few years and especially since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, “museums’ costs have been continuing to skyrocket, and every source of support has suffered dramatic decline,” says Edward H. Able Jr., president and chief executive of the Washington, D.C.-based American Assn. of Museums.

To ease the budget squeeze, many of America’s estimated 16,000 art, history and other museums, including zoos, have raised entrance fees -- perhaps by 50% or more on average since 1999, according to the results from questionnaires that Able’s group sent to 5,000 museums.

It’s not just locals who feel the pain; it’s tourists too. Next to shopping and outdoor activities, museums and historic sites are among the top reasons we travel, according to surveys by the Travel Industry Assn. of America.

The causes of the increasing fees are numerous. Take government funding. If you can find any.

At New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, only 14% of 2002 operating income came from the city -- and nearly half of that went to pay utility bills. Major sources for the rest included the museum’s endowment, private donations, memberships (14%) and admissions (10%).

At the New Orleans Museum of Art, local, state and federal money typically covers about a fourth of the operating costs, with the balance from private sources, says director E. John Bullard.

Even the Smithsonian Institution, probably the best-known government-funded museum organization in America, took only three-fourths of its 2002 budget from public coffers. The balance came mostly from private donations, investment earnings and business ventures. (Its 16 museums do not charge admission.)

By contrast, in Singapore, the affluent island nation of 4.6 million off the Malay Peninsula, the government in 2001 funded more than 90% of the budget of the National Heritage Board, which oversees museums.

Many European museums are also heavily financed by government. Many in London, an otherwise pricey city to visit, don’t charge admission.

Meanwhile, public support of museums in the U.S. has been sliding. Exact figures are hard to pin down. But in 1989, governments financed nearly 40% of budgets, on average, of museums polled by the American Assn. of Museums. Last year the figure was a little more than 25%.

The current average is even lower, many think, given the recent collapse of state and local budgets, the main sources of public money for museums. (The federal government provides a “pittance,” in Able’s view -- actually about a fourth from all government sources, according to his group’s poll.)

Other revenue-erasing trends in the last several years are precipitous drops in private donations, investment income and foreign visitors to the U.S. -- the first two driven by the long economic recession.

Digging out isn’t easy.

The cost of mounting and transporting special exhibitions, Able says, has in some cases quadrupled since 9/11. Among the expenses are higher insurance for traveling collections; new air security and fuel surcharges; and extra personnel hired, amid airline staff cutbacks, to supervise moves.

Lending museums are getting more savvy too, according to New Orleans’ Bullard. The “participation fee,” which covers little more than the right to exhibit a traveling collection, cost his museum $50,000 for the King Tut exhibit 25 years ago, compared with $1 million for this month’s “Quest for Immortality” Egyptian show, he says.

Admission fees have increased significantly. At the New Orleans museum, they were $1 per adult 25 years ago, with no extra charge for the special exhibit. Now they are $6 for regular admission, $17 for the show. (And the city of New Orleans, anticipating a tourism boost, is picking up the $1-million tab.)

So special exhibits, despite high costs, become a “wonderful opportunity” for the museum to generate income, raise its profile and gain members, Bullard says -- even as he worries that rising entrance fees may drive down attendance. He calls it the “blockbuster merry-go-round” that many museums ride to survive.

Others, among them the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, eschew special exhibit fees while charging a bit more for regular entrance. The New York museum asks for a $12 “suggested” donation for adults.

You don’t have to go to Singapore or Hong Kong to find inexpensive museums. More than one-third of museums in the American Assn. of Museums’ latest poll don’t charge admission, and more than two-thirds have free days. It pays to call or check Web sites before a visit. And despite typically higher prices in big cities, the average nonmember fee in the poll was $5 -- not bad compared with the price of movies, pro sports and concerts.

At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which recently increased its regular adult admission to $9 from $7, you can go free from 5 to 9 p.m. Fridays and 5 to 8 p.m. other days (except Wednesdays, when it’s closed). Unless you want to go to its latest blockbuster, “Old Masters, Impressionists, and Moderns” (closing Monday), which charges $17 weekdays, $20 weekends, plus $6 for an audio tour.

I guess we’d better get used to that. Or resolve to provide more public funding for the arts.

Jane Engle welcomes comments and suggestions but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or e-mail jane.engle@latimes.com.