Rated: Nightmare.
As of March 1, 2018 the Met has instituted a two-tier system. Visitors from outside New York State pay full price. New York State residents and students from the tri-state area follow the old so-called “Pay-as-you-wish” [sic] system:
https://www.metmuseum.org/press/news/2018/admissionspolicy
But the reality is, the salespersons will not accept less than a dollar. They will not tell you this outright, instead they’ll initiate negotiations along the lines of “how much do you wish to pay?”
Bring a dollar, because they’ll claim they can’t make change. And bring ID; there used to be a list posted of acceptable forms of identification. (Library card, bill with a current address, etc.), but I haven’t it seen it lately.
And stay away from the desk that has a supervisor hovering nearby, they’re there to see that the salesperson extracts the maximum from you, or finds an excuse not to honor your ID. As one plaintiff in the 2013 case against the Met put it, if the Museum wasn’t so sneaky the lines wouldn’t be so long to begin with. On the other hand, the Museum benefits from those long lines in two ways: first, they artificially suggest how very, very popular the Museum must be, just look at all those people lining up.
And second: it forces the salespeople (who, regrettably, are not represented by the United Auto Workers) into a cadence infernale more typical of the assembly line at GM: no time to show any type of empathy with visitors, of the type that might lead the worker, say, to show some flexibility.
Here’s a suggestion:
You might decide, being an inquisitive mind, to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Or you might decide, being a serious scholar and all that, to visit the Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art—an excellent notion to begin with:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/libraries-and-research-centers/thomas-j-watson-library
To do so you must request a pass at the Information desk in the Main Hall or the Admissions desk downstairs. After which you can enter the Museum freely. The Library is open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday from 10:00 to 5:00 and Saturdays to 4:00, which kinda limits you if you were hoping to visit the Met on a Sunday but if you're looking forward to visiting the Met on Sunday your mind is not inquisitive, it's warped.
Should you decide to use the Library on a regular basis you should apply for a Library card, which will give you free admission to the Museum on a regular basis. Of course, if on your way to the Library you should decide to refresh your heart and brain with a detour through the galleries, But it would be wrong. (Who said that? I forget.)
Let us know your own experience in the comments section below.
August 31, 2023; revised September 29, 2023
November 2, 2023, circa 12:00 noon
Got to talking to a couple, an elderly man from Utah accompanied on a visit to New York by his forty-ish daughter from Georgia. They had reserved tickets with a group for later on in the day but had come to the Museum early. They asked the ticket salesperson if they might use their reservation early. Nope. They asked if there was a restroom they could use. Sure, said the salesperson, I can sell you a ticket.
Now as every salesperson knows, there are restrooms on Level G. that are outside the ticketed area. So why would this salesperson lie? In 2013 a suit (Saskia v. Metropolitan Museum of Art) was launched against the Met, based in part on an affidavit from a former salesperson who claimed that the sales staff were consistently pressured to extract as much cash as feasible from visitors and were evaluated based on the receipts they racked up. [Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein. "Former Met Supervisor Reveals Museum's Entry-fee 'Bounties' in Blockbuster Affidavit," New York Post, July 6, 2013].
Of course the Met denied this on a stack of catalogs. And we all know how open the Met has always been, don't we? As a former Museum director put it,
"Some have suggested that it is public-spirited to advocate that in order to reach the communities we serve, we should seek to demystify the museum-going experience. I must say, I view our role quite differently; in fact, as the very opposite."
- Philippe de Montebello, "Art Museums, Inspiring Public Trust,” in James Cuno et al., "Whose Muse? Art Museums and the Public Trust" (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 166.
September 1, 2023, circa 2:30 pm.
Approached the ticket counter in the Southwest corner of the Great Hall, because I wanted to document the text for the admissions policy, which is posted above the desk. A scruffy-looking young man (not a guard but with a Museum tag) loudly told me,"no photographs allowed in here." Somebody's worried.