France to experiment with free museums
From Artforum:
French Prime Minister François Fillon has announced that France will experiment with free admission to certain state museums in Paris and beyond, measuring the effects over the course of an unspecified trial period. In an editorial for Le Figaro, Emmanuel Fessy questions the policy, which has already been adopted—with notable success—in Great Britain. “What if free museums were not actually a good idea?” asks Fessy. The Louvre welcomes 7.6 million visitors every year—two thirds of whom are foreigners—and collects €40 million ($54.5 million) from the sale of tickets to its permanent collections alone. Apart from lost revenues, free museums “will only increase the pernicious sentiment of no-cost culture,” writes Fessy, “a sentiment already fed by the development of the Internet and the explosion of music and film piracy.”
Read full article (Artforum, July 10, 2007)
Read editorial in Le Figaro (July 5, 2007)
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