Times may be hard but museums should stay free
If you go to New York and you want to see Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon at the Museum of Modern Art, it will cost you $25 to get in. A visit to the Louvre in Paris to see the Mona Lisa costs 11.60. Seeing Rembrandt's The Night Watch in Amsterdam requires an outlay of 12.50. And the entrance charge for the Sistine Chapel in Rome is 15.
But in London you can visit the British Museum, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery or the Tate and see Picassos, Vermeers, Rembrandts or Van Goghs absolutely free. You can pop in for five minutes to see your favourite work or you and your family can spend five hours.
This is because 10 years ago today entry to our national museums became free. As a result, we have some of the finest and certainly most popular museums in the world - more than 50 million people visited the UK's national museums in 2010/11 and attendance has more than doubled since free admission was introduced.
Access to our culture and national collections is now available to everyone, not just the privileged few. Our museums are uniquely egalitarian spaces. Whether you are rich or poor, the door is always open to the collections that are held in trust for everyone.
This is especially important for young people. When there is a late night at the V&A or Tate Britain, the place can feel more like it's hosting a celebration, as young people come to hang out with their friends - but many grow up to be enthusiastic museum-goers. The same is true for the thousands of schoolchildren who have been inspired by a work of art seen first on a school trip.
It makes London a more welcoming place. Foreign visitors love coming here - there are none of the queues to pay outside the Louvre or the Uffizi in Florence. What is not taken in entrance charges is spent two or threefold in museum bookshops, cafés and restaurants. And the economic benefit of our major museums and galleries to the nation is estimated to be £1.5 billion per year.
Broadly £1 in every £1,000 in the UK economy can be directly related to the museum and gallery sector. Far from being a subsidised cost, free admission represents very good value for money. The seven million additional overseas visitors now frequenting our museums spend on average £90 a day to the benefit of the wider UK economy. The £315 million thus generated far outstrips the cost of the policy.
The impact on tourism and the UK economy has been remarkable. Eight of the top 10 visitor attractions in Britain are national museums.
Some people are saying that in a recession, when cuts have to be made, free museum entry has become a luxury. But free admission is one of the signs of a civilised culture. At a time of doom and gloom we can demonstrate that we are a creative nation that can give everyone something to enjoy and learn from for free.
Our galleries and museums celebrate the past, but they also look forward. Museums play an important part in the future life of London.
Across the world, the success of free admission to national museums is regarded as a model in making available the treasures we all own to the widest possible audience. France and China are already following our example. The Government is to be congratulated on maintaining this principle at a time of constraint.
