France to test free museums
France, home to some of the world’s great art, is trying a six-month experiment. If museums are free, culture officials wonder, will they attract the kind of people who would usually rather watch television?
Starting Jan. 1, 14 French museums and monuments, most of them low-profile, will open to visitors free of charge for six months, Culture Minister Christine Albanel said Tuesday. Three are in Paris — Guimet, home to Asian art; Cluny, with a collection of medieval treasures; and Arts et Metiers, dedicated to scientific inventions. Their full-price tickets range from €6.50 ($9.27) to €7.50 ($10.70).
Conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy campaigned for free museums before his May election, and the idea has stirred debate in France’s culture world since then, with critics asking whether it’s merely a superficial way of addressing the profound, decades-old question of how to democratize culture.
Another underlying question is how France — proclaimed by its prime minister to be in “a state of bankruptcy” — could afford the measure.
Albanel, who has been skeptical in the past about free museums, said officials would study the experiment’s results and decide how to proceed.
Read full article (International Herald Tribune, October 23, 2007)
Related posts: Prime minister announces plan to test making France’s museums free // France to experiment with free museums // 40 artifacts return to Italy // Museums enjoy their free for all // France’s first immigration museum opens //