Once again the generic museum has raised its admission price—I’m talking about the Whitney, or the Guggenheim New York, both, actually. Once again, generic pudgy hands are waved in despair; generic beers are raised in generic Brooklyn bars: what can you do?
And of course, generic critics in generic art ‘zines, like this one:
https://hyperallergic.com/836693/guggenheim-raises-ticket-costs-as-us-museums-get-pricier/
There are a couple of gems in there—no different, actually from any other artworld gem. So, for the fun of it, let’s parse this one:
Some data suggests that admission prices are not the primary barrier to cultural institutions as visitors who want to be there are willing to pay for it.
Translation: Science shows that people who pay to visit a museum are happy to pay for their museum visit, ergo, people are happy to pay for a museum visit no matter the cost.
There’s a beauty to that syllogism that’s worthy of Medieval scholasticism. Let’s assume there is a generic “willingness to pay for my museum experience.” Since that willingness is the eternal essence of museum-going, ergo et propter hoc atque de re judicandum the visitor, being also generic, will pay for their admission no matter what. Mouse is a noun. A mouse eats cheese. Ergo, nouns eat cheese. QED.
And what about the non-visitors?
There are other steps museums could take to increase accessibility including programs for low-income visitors and marketing strategies to attract people who would typically prefer to spend their time and money elsewhere.
Translation: Science shows that people who won’t go to museums whatever the price will go to museums if they’re sufficiently “nudged,” to use a favorite term of neo-liberal behavioral economics. The good visitor is the one who pays no matter what. The bad, the non-visitor, is the one who visits only with the proper incentive, so long as it’s not the simple incentive of lowering the cost of admission. What those incentives are, is anybody’s guess since the same incentives haven’t worked so far. Bad, bad non-visitor.
Does this sound familiar? It’s the language of the Welfare System. Museums are like work. They’re good for you. Some people don’t want to visit a museum the way some people—the same people, actually—don’t want to work or don’t need to work. Can’t wait to hear about the Culture Queen pulling up in front of the Guggenheim with her five kids to claim her free admission to Harlem on My Mind—oh, wait, that was in 1970, just a few months before the Metropolitan Museum of Art decided to charge admission. Rinse, wash, repeat.
I’ve got a lot more to say about this—it will be published in France in a few months, a revision of Jump Jim Corot, which I first published ten years ago, in English. The original version is still online, and I suggest you download it soon if you’re interested, because I’ll be taking it down to make way for the new English version:
http://theorangepress.com/publications/jimcorot/index.html
WOID XXIII-22
August 2, 2023