I disagree strongly with Rachel Cooke’s argument (“We should pay to get into museums”, Comment). As a newly arrived immigrant in the UK in 1997, I integrated into British society quicker because of the cultural life in this country to which I was exposed.
Museums were an essential part of that process. With a young family and on a low wage, I benefited from the free admission to museums that the New Labour government had just introduced. My wife and I used to take our infant son to the National Gallery, the Natural History Museum (he soon became a fan of it) and the V&A. When our daughter was born, we continued the same trend. The result is now two culture-savvy and well-read adolescents. With prices for some tourist sites already out of reach for many, museums remain the last bastion of what a civilised society should be.
Please, Rachel, do not join the philistines. There are already donation notices in the main museums in London. Keep museums free, for the sake of this and future generations.
Mario López-Goicoechea
London N9
I agree with Rachel Cooke’s dismissal of claims that entrance fees will lead to exclusion having seen no change in visitor demographics after they were scrapped. In fact, their reintroduction could present an opportunity to increase inclusion by allowing museums to invest to make their collections available through other channels: a 40-second YouTube video of Harry Emanuel’s silver swan or a three-dimensional virtual tour of AN Wilson’s favourite Potteries museum and art gallery.
Neil Macehiter
Cambridge
Rachel Cooke commits the familiar mistake of confusing what happens in London with what happens in the rest of the UK. In fact, the visitor profile of many of our museums, including those for which I am responsible in Liverpool, has broadened since the 1990s precisely because the museums are free and committed to being inclusive. It’s such a crazy notion that introducing admission charges (in all but our tourist hot-spots, where the rules are different) either generates significant income or is of any benefit to “the less well-off”.
David Fleming
Liverpool
Having correctly identified who pays for museum and gallery upkeep – taxpayers – Rachel Cooke takes a swipe at those objecting to London’s disproportionate share of national public funding for culture as “disingenuous”. Yet she seems to accept that charging tourists and locals the same in York constitutes “a relative unfairness”.
Universal taxation in the UK provides for the budget of the culture ministry that annually gives 90% (£450m) of its “national” museum grants total to London-based institutions. For the two-thirds of England’s population beyond comfortable reach of London, not to mention Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, there is a substantial geographically determined premium to be paid before any possible right to “free” access.
The real “unfairness” is that London doesn’t pay for what it has.
Christopher Gordon
Winchester
Rachel Cooke starts down a dangerous road by arguing that only those who visit galleries and museums should have to pay for them. Following that logic, why should taxpayers fund libraries if they don’t use them? Charge per book borrowed. Public footpaths? Replace stiles with turnstiles. The next question will be: “Why should healthy taxpayers with no children fund doctors and teachers?” There is enough of this sort of thinking coming from the government and its supporters without the Observer adding to it.
John Filby
Ashover, Derbyshire
