As you may have learned, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be raising its recommended admission for adult visitors to $20, effective August 1.
While it is always difficult for us to ask our generous public to be even more generous, we believe this change will help the Museum maintain financial equilibrium in difficult times—and, most important, allow us to maintain the programming you have come to expect from the Metropolitan. The Museum presents more than 30 special exhibitions a year, dozens of free gallery talks and tours every week, thoughtful interpretations of works from our permanent collection, and free visits and education programs for some 100,000 students annually from New York City schools.
It is important to note that the Met's admission schedule will remain voluntary, not mandatory. Visitors will continue to pay what they wish. And while the Museum encourages you to be as generous as you can, the concept of recommended admission remains vital to its mission and its compact with the City.
Even more important, your general admission button continues to include—at no extra cost, ever—admission to any and all of the Museum's special exhibitions. No other museum can make this claim. This fall alone, the price of admission will ensure free access to such shows as "Americans in Paris, 1860–1900," "Louis Comfort Tiffany and Laurelton Hall—An Artist's Country Estate," and "Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde."
In discussing the Museum's admission policy with the press this morning, Mr. Wade Schuman, a coordinator at the New York Academy of Art, made the following comment:
"The Met is the last good deal in New York. . . . It's like Central Park and the Met are for everybody. It's one of the things that makes New York really great."
The Metropolitan thanks Mr. Schuman, and our millions of visitors, for continuing to support us in our mission.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
July 13, 2006