From Sweden comes a cautionary tale of what can happen when free museum admission is scrapped. Visitor numbers to the country's major museums have dropped spectacularly after entrance fees were re-introduced last January, reports the Art Newspaper.
A survey conducted by the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter found that visits to 15 of the country's major cultural institutions have dropped by 33% in a single year, from 272,300 in January 2006 to 183,000 in January 2007. The greatest decline was at the Swedish Museum of Architecture, which saw an 83% decrease in visitor numbers. Its next-door neighbour, the prestigious Moderna Museet, suffered a 35% fall.
Sweden's centre-right government, which came to power last September, removed the legal requirement for museums to retain free entry, while at the same time cutting their subsidy by up to 25%. Institutions had little choice but to start charging again. Free admission had only been introduced only in 2004.
The news will make uncomfortable reading for anyone who believes that re-introducing entrance fees could restore the financial health of the arts in the UK, which came in for another battering after it was announced this week that an extra £675m will be diverted from the National Lottery to help finance the 2012 Olympic Games.
Coming on top of the previously announced £410m cuts, the idea of re-introducing entrance fees may have seemed to some to be an extremely tempting means of stemming the financial flow. But as the experience of Sweden shows, this would only worsen the problem further. After all, how do you make money out of visitors when none are coming?
