What’s Wrong With Free Museum Admission

“The cruel truth is that free museum entry has turned out to be a mixed blessing. Yes, the number of visitors going to galleries has increased dramatically, but the figures are not what they seem. A Mori poll conducted in 2002 discovered that, although numbers had increased, the make-up of the typical museumgoer had remained unchanged. What was actually happening was that the same people were going more often. And those people were, as before, the middle-class, the educated, the culturally involved.”