FAQ

Tourism and museum admissions have rebounded to pre-COVID levels. Further, New York City taxpayers subsidize these institutions with hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

The institutions operate rent-free for a total of approximately $700M in indirect subsidies.

New Yorkers deserve the reciprocity of free admission and popular instruction as codified in state law.

As an example, The Met offers corporate donors free admission for their staff. In exchange for just a few million dollars, The Met forgoes tens of millions of dollars in admissions fees from corporate staff. This is redundant for New York City-based employees.

Most of the institutions are well endowed. It is up to these institutions’ Boards of Trustees to operate their institutions profitably. They have the obligation to meet the provisions of the law first, and then to make the decisions necessary to be profitable or to set in place policies and practice to fund deficits.

Until 1970, the institutions’ policies complied with state law.

In 1970, The Metropolitan Museum of Art undertook a substantial expansion and sought approval from the City of New York’s Park Commissioner.

During this expansion effort, The Met sought permission to charge a pay-whatyou-wish but you-must-pay-something admission policy.

From 1970 on, institutions seeking admission fee changes generally sidestepped state authorization.

New York City’s Park Commissioner and other heads of city agencies or city administrations did not have the authority to act to supersede state law.

Laws are not stagnant. They are amended and repealed to adjust for changing times and terms.

With the exception of the New York Botanical Garden, the Legislature has not expressly repealed the legal mandates for free admission. Given that they were created as special acts of the State Legislature and not repealed, they remain fully enforceable.

Further, we learned through Freedom of Information Act [FOIL] requests that most of the institutions are charging admission due to agreements with the City. State laws, however, supersede local laws.

We recently learned that the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) does not believe these free admission laws are still applicable because they were passed before the City’s consolidation in 1898. Despite this, DCLA continues to credit the mid-1800s public-private partnership as the foundation for the NYC Cultural Institutions Group, which it oversees.  

The Cultural Institutions Group offers many programs for discounted admission and educational opportunities at participating institutions, but these do not measure up to what was mandated by the laws of the original public-private partnership, nor do they fulfill what was promised to New Yorkers in exchange for our tax dollars. 

Further, the legal mandates for free admission were created as special acts of the State Legislature. They do not derive their force from the City Charter, nor are they municipal governance provisions. As a matter of settled law, special acts remain fully enforceable unless the State Legislature expressly repeals them, which it has not done. 

Currently, none of the institutions offer the number of free days that New Yorkers are entitled to by law.

Any form of non-compliant free policy is a veiled attempt to dupe New York City taxpayers, workers and school children to accept less than what they are entitled to.

Further, the current admissions policies do not acknowledge or adhere to the public-private partnership that ultimately enabled the creation of these institutions, nor do they address the needs of New Yorkers for whom the institutions were created.

Access remains a challenge for many New Yorkers who:

• can’t afford the cost of admission
• can’t arrange their schedules to make it to the institutions on the one day or brief few hours per week that they might allow free admission
• assume that they cannot afford admission when they see suggested donation fees, or who fear judgement for paying less
• struggle with literacy and/or English as a second language

Rather than treating free access as insider knowledge, the institutions should comply with and be more transparent about New Yorkers’ rights to free admission in exchange for their free rent. Amid an ongoing affordability crisis, asking the average New Yorker to contribute more beyond the support they already provide via their taxes is unfair. It not only deters them from visiting and enjoying the institutions, but obfuscates the real, reciprocal nature of our relationship to them.