The Met’s New Required Fee for Non-New Yorkers

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/07/opinion/admission-metropolitan-museum-art.html

Version 0 of 1.

To the Editor:

Re “The Met to Non-New Yorkers: $25, Please” (Arts pages, Jan. 5), about the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s plan to end its “suggested” admission fee for out-of-state visitors:

The Met is the greatest place for a world education, to appreciate the achievements and intelligence of peoples throughout time and across geographical and cultural boundaries. It is an education that all people need, young and old, rich and poor, black, brown and white — especially in these times of exclusion and nationalistic arrogance. You can’t learn more about the world than at the Met.

So I beg the Metropolitan Museum leadership, let it be accessible to all. Let people pay what they can, and no ID carding. This is not a luxury destination. It is a public good, an extremely necessary one. It is not about art for art connoisseurs. It is about world history and ideas. Everyone should have the chance to casually drop by.

LYDIA CHEN, NEWTON, MASS.

The writer is a filmmaker.

To the Editor:

Re “The Museum Should Be Open to All” (“A Critics’ Conversation,” Jan. 5): I am in complete agreement with the critics Roberta Smith and Holland Cotter. As an art history professor I have, over 30 years, brought more than a thousand students to the Met, many for their first visit. Mismanagement and bad decisions have put the Met in its current financial situation.

For wealthy museum board members, $25 may seem to be a pittance. For normal people, $25 only furthers the widespread and unfortunate impression that art is a pastime for the elite. To expect visitors who earn in a year what many of the board members make in a week to cover the museum’s budget shortfall is outrageous.

PETER MARK, STRASBOURG, FRANCE

The writer is a professor of art history at Wesleyan University.

To the Editor:

As a New York tourist who finds that $25 buys a sad-looking tuna sandwich and a small iced tea (including tip), a three-day entrance fee for the Met at $25 is a bargain beyond imagination for what awaits you inside.

DAVID SMOLLAR, SAN DIEGO

To the Editor:

There is an additional objection to those voiced so cogently by Holland Cotter and Roberta Smith to a mandatory out-of-towner entrance fee to the Metropolitan Museum. For a city that enjoys tens of billions of dollars in revenue from tourism annually, the decision is the worst public relations move imaginable.

VICTORIA NEWHOUSE, NEW YORK

The writer is the author of “Towards a New Museum.”