- ADMISSION FEE TO MOCA MUSEUM FOR FREE
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- ADMISSION FEE TO MOCA MUSEUM FREE
We also have a lot of digital interface that I think adds to the experience of the museum, not just the collection, feeling very contemporary.”īecause of its strong attendance figures-last year the highest of any US museum dedicated to contemporary art-the Broad has been flooded with questions from other museums. And, instead of the standard, sometimes imposing, information desk when you enter, she says, “we have visitor service associates who are for the most part standing and greeting visitors eye to eye. She offered as examples the inviting building design by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, where you do not have to climb stairs to enter the museum (“you just walk into museum off the sidewalk”). “We took an almost evangelical approach to connecting to a wide-ranging audience,” she says. The Broad’s director, Joanne Heyler, says that “free admission has played a big role” in reaching this wide audience but it is far from the only factor. Also, 60% of its visitors are under the age of 35, according to last year’s data. Approximately 70% of visitors who fill in surveys near the museum’s exit identify as non-white, compared to an industry average of 27%, she says. What is most remarkable about the Broad is who it has been reaching: an audience that a museum spokesperson describes as “unusually young and diverse”.
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Its first full year, 2016, drew 753,252 visitors and that increased to 917,489 last year, putting it within spitting distance of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (968,161 in 2019), whose numbers had been declining of late with half of its campus closed for renovation (demolition of the main buildings started last week).
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The Broad, which has been free to the public for all but special exhibitions since its opening in 2015, has seen more rapid growth. The Hammer Museum’s visitor numbers have increased by 15% since it went free Sarah M. “We’re still a bit of a secret to the general public,” says the Hammer’s director Ann Philbin, “but I think our building project will change that.” Due to be completed in 2022, this involves annexing a neighbouring bank building and creating 60% more gallery space and more street-level accessibility and visibility. But the Westwood-based museum is currently undergoing a major $90m expansion by architect Michael Maltzan that could change those dynamics. Since going free in 2014, the Hammer Museum’s reported attendance has grown by about 15%-from around 210,000 in 2013 to around 240,000 now. Some have also, pre-virus, seen jumps in attendance as a direct or indirect result. All museum directors here see it as a way to make their institutions more accessible to more people, including younger and more diverse demographics. So what exactly is the free admission experiment in Los Angeles all about? It depends on whom you ask. If we have 5,000 people come who wouldn’t come otherwise, that is important.” “I’m not counting on the audience doubling or tripling, I think that would be the wrong goal.
“It’s a step towards being more porous, more welcoming and more open,” he said.
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In announcing the decision to eliminate MOCA’s general admission charge on 11 January amid much fanfare and local TV coverage, Biesenbach insisted that the decision was not a bid for huge numbers. Indeed, Los Angeles is home to what might be the biggest experiment today with free admission, with all three of its big contemporary art museums-the Hammer, MOCA and the Broad, as well as the more encyclopaedic-minded Getty-charging no general admission fee.
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While the Broad opened in 2015 with an explicit mandate from the philanthropist- collectors Eli and Edythe Broad to become a major civic destination drawing serious crowds, the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Klaus Biesenbach, has tried to change the terms of that conversation, insisting that beefing up lacklustre attendance figures is not his goal.īiesenbach made that clear while unveiling plans for free admission last year, generally seen in the industry to be a bid for increased attendance. The coronavirus has changed US museums’ priorities faster than you can buy hand sanitiser-instead of trying to pack their galleries, institutions have closed their doors altogether to limit virus transmission.īut the question of whether attendance is the best measure of success for museums was alive and well long before the virus figured in, and the debate has played out dramatically in Los Angeles over the past five years.