Museum building momentum

Special to The Clarion-Ledger Mississippi Museum of Art Director Betsy Bradley (top) describes to a tour group from Millsaps College what will be placed in a gathering spot and entry way in the new museum. When patrons enter (drawings), they will be greeted with an information desk and a coffee shop. Farther in, there is a gathering space where a William Dunlap painting will hang, not far from the entry to the free collection.

The Mississippi Museum of Art's mission is to become a museum without walls. So why keep up a financial one?

Breaking down barriers to attendance is a key reason behind free admission when the museum reopens in its new space June 9. The neighboring Mississippi Arts Pavilion is now under renovation to become the its new home. The museum's most recent adult admission price was $5 (discontinued in the waning months in its current location).

The decision puts Jackson's art museum in line with a handful of other art museums nationwide that are forgoing tickets in favor of a draw that's bigger, more diverse, more casual and more frequent.

"If we're about being a museum without walls, and being accessible and transparency, really, why should we charge people to go and see the permanent collection?" museum director Betsy Bradley said.

"Even though we're not a public agency, we feel like we're stewards of that art for the people," she said. The nonprofit institution is tax-exempt. "To some extent we are accountable to the public, so we wanted to make sure people could wander in and out three times a week if they wanted to, and it not be a burden to them."

Museum officials also want to pull traffic from the city convention center (now under construction across the street).

Like other museums that have have gone to free admission recently, the Mississippi Museum of Art will continue to charge for special blockbuster exhibitions, such as Between God & Man: Angels in Italian Art, the next major show in the Annie Laurie Swaim Hearin Memorial Exhibition Series. On display when the museum reopens, its tickets will range from $6 for students to $12 for adults.

With museums' funding concerns, "I think this makes a really good compromise," said Millsaps College art history professor Elise Smith, "making it accessible but also realizing that we have to support museums if we want them to survive."

It'll reach out to those who couldn't afford to visit, Jackson artist George Miles Jr. said. "That'll be good for the city and probably push the arts to the forefront, where it needs to be.

"That'll bring in a whole different crowd."

REMOVING BARRIERS

Removing barriers was also the primary reason the Indianapolis Museum of Art nixed its general admission price of $7 in January, but other factors played into that decision, as it did in Jackson.

Indianapolis Art Museum Director Maxwell Anderson drew on a study he'd done for the Getty Trust of how museums operate in real dollars and real experiences.

Among the top 100 museums in America, excluding the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, "the average revenue from tickets to art museum budgets is about 4 percent," Anderson said. So 96 percent of income is from other sources, yet public and media focus when measuring museums is all about attendance, he said. (MoMA admission is $20 for adults, also the recommended adult price at the Met.)

"Why not decouple reality from the fantasy and acknowledge that free general admission can only help contribute to people's interest in museums and reduce barriers without having necessarily a major adverse impact on their operating budget?" he said.

Also, with its coming sculpture park that'll be open for free, "it seemed to me counter-intuitive for people to be able to experience art outdoors for free and indoors for a fee," Anderson said.

In Jackson, ticket sales' impact on the budget changes when the museum has a blockbuster exhibit, Bradley said, but in years without one, 4 percent is "probably about right."

While she expects to see a small reduction in earned income from admissions, "I would expect also to see an increase in coffee shop sales, gift shop sales created by lengthened stays at the museum or more frequent visits," she said. A museum cafe, The Palette, will be open at the new location; the museum has been without a cafe since July 2002.

Baltimore's two world-class art museums, The Baltimore Museum of Art and the Walters Art Museum, went to free admission in October, a move made possible by lead gifts from the city and county, with additional private support.

Since then, the Baltimore Museum of Art has seen about a 15 percent increase in attendance, with a more diverse and younger audience, and more families, director Doreen Bolger said. Some members also have upgraded memberships. "There's a real buzz in the community about it.

"I don't think free admission is a trend yet, because too small a number are doing it," Bolger said. "It's a pretty daring thing to do," risking even a small percentage of the budget and not yet knowing the impact on membership or what kind of programs or special exhibitions are needed to continue to attract a paying public.

"The tide is really shifting back to free museums," said Gail Andrews, director of the Birmingham Museum of Art, a city institution which has been free since its 1951 founding except for blockbuster exhibitions. "We should be free. We're very much like libraries, great educational resources. And a function of government is to make that available for its citizens."

INCREASING DIVERSITY

Free admission also busts the impression of elitism that's plagued museums for years. It brings a friendlier, breezier approach to the way the public interacts with the museum and its art.

In Indianapolis, "we don't want a visit to the art museum to be an occasion. We want it to be improvisational," Anderson said. "We want it to be on a spur of the moment. We don't want it to be everybody gathering up the family and getting in the car, and making a commitment to spend several hours in the museum."

Bradley said, "I hope that people will see this as a very comfortable place to have a spontaneous visit."

Some already are.

On a recent tour of the new space, after hearing about comfortable spots and wireless Internet, "I'm going to be living in those little family corners," Millsaps sophomore Lorene Dodd, 19, said.