Are Museums Just for the Rich?

In March 2006, the University of Chicago published a study which found that museums in the Chicago area are not attracting diverse audiences - but are museums to blame?

In March 2006, the University of Chicago published a study which found that museums in the Chicago area are not attracting diverse crowds. The crowds that pass through Chicago's turn-styles, "are disproportionately white, educated and affluent". The study included The Art Institute of Chicago and The Field Museum of Natural History.

Now what is going on here? The first thing that both the media and museum professionals recognized is the fact that museums in major metropolitan areas have been increasing their prices rather consistently over the past few years. While price gouging would be an easy, if clearly overly simplistic, case for the media to make, almost all non-profits across the country have struggled since 2001. The price of a college-education has gone out of reach for most families since that date as well, for example.

In reality, government funding has either declined or stayed at or near their 2001 levels over the past few years, and many museums have been forced to gradually charge more for admission to keep up with cost.

So is it fair to say that museums are just for the rich? As is often the case, the answer is far more complicated than many will lead you to believe. Prices for most public outings have skyrocketed in the past few years. Going to a baseball game as a family, for example, has become more difficult over the past twenty-five years.

I would like to try to frame this discussion in a slightly different fashion. In discussing the diversity of museum audiences, it is clear that museums, and the state and federal governments that support them should be very concerned with the findings of this study. That said, however, I think it would be fair to argue that many of our popular conceptions of scientific, historic, or artistic ideas come from museums. If a child takes just one trip to a natural history museum, seeing a dinosaur first hand will help build his paradigm for an understanding of paleontology he will carry for the rest of his life.

Museums should be affordable, and their attendance should reflect the diversity of the people in the city or region they are meant to serve - not just the "upper crust" of the people in the area.