I love museums, and I love the British obsession with them. Not just the grand institutions that stand proudly in our big cities, but the smaller oddities: the Framework Knitters Museum in Ruddington, Nottinghamshire, or the Bakelite Museum in Somerset (temporarily closed and awaiting a new home). These speak to us as a nation of hobbyists and obscurantists: proud bastions of niche in a society whose concerns have become depressingly mainstream.
But museums are also a cult. When we talk about free entry – and there are hundreds of museums and galleries that offer it – people get strangely emotional about the NHS, as if we believed that free entry is a constitutional right and that any attempt to monetise it is an infringement on our freedom.
In a perfect world, it is true, all our museums would be free to enter. But, as I have said in this column more than once, there is no money anymore. So over the weekend I agree with Mark Jones, the former head of the British Museum, who said that his former estate should charge foreign visitors to see the wonders of Mesopotamia and ancient Japan.
The British Museum has been in this kind of area before. I remember the furore about a decade ago when it introduced an entrance fee for tourist groups, a policy it has still not implemented – but large groups have to book in advance and are banned from certain rooms.
Now is the time. I can’t understand why museums haven’t been more aggressive in charging for admission in the last few years. Why should tourists get into our museums for free? After all, they pay the tour operators and hotels, and most of these visitors are rich: a ticket probably costs very little. Some believe that museums, which hold the world’s greatest treasures, have a moral obligation not to charge visitors; I think that’s a delusional nonsense. Museums have bills and staff to pay like everyone else, and while we in Britain fund museums with our taxes, those from abroad contribute nothing.
In fact, I would go further than Jones. He thinks that foreign visitors under 25 should not pay. In contrast, as a way of involving young minds, and especially the less advantaged, I would suggest free admission for anyone under 18, unless they come from abroad – this may sound discriminatory, but young tourists visiting our national institutions are much more likely to be able to get a museum ticket.
Many institutions are poorer than the British Museum. My current obsession – the withdrawal of local council funding from major arts institutions – means that museums across the country face a bleak future, and entrance fees would go some way to preventing the closure of venues whose councils are on the brink of insolvency (or, as in Birmingham, already in trouble).
As much as people love cake—I love cake as much as I love museums—the lure of the café and gift shop isn’t enough to keep the wolf away from the door.
In recent years, the UK has been toying with the idea of a tourist tax, which has been implemented in many parts of Europe and has always seemed like a perfectly sensible thing to do.
If you want to gauge its potential here, look at Manchester, which began trials of a tourist tax in 2022. Its charges were modest – £1 per room per night for selected hotels in the city – and yet it generated £2.8m in the first year. Our museums and galleries may only see a fraction of that, but with higher charges – which I fully support – the money could be spread further. Manchester is a confident city that blends commercialism with civic pride. Others could learn from this.
Also note that Manchester’s tourist tax is not intended to be a deterrent like Venice’s €5 (£4.20) day trip fee; it is clearly designed as a prohibitive measure. But such measures are also making their way into Britain. The councils that govern Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole recently proposed the country’s first “beach tourist tax”, but it was put on hold earlier this week after opposition from local hotels.
In Brighton, you now have to pay £1 to visit the pier if you live outside the area. The fee is small but it raises the issue of what is ‘local’: many visitors are inconvenienced because they live just outside the catchment area. So such charges need to be implemented with attention to geographical reach and in a way that accommodates those who live ‘nearby but not that close’.
Last week I predicted a bleak future for the arts under Labour – although, I admit, it would be no bleaker than life under the current Government. But Mark Jones has proposed something that could provide a rescue plan for parts of the cultural sector. I can’t help suspecting that the people who oppose charging admission are the same people who oppose most corporate sponsorship. It’s hard to predict exactly where the money will come from.
Of course, it will not come from the future government.