Free to All?

Museums are often described in the academic literature as institutions that provide a public service. Actually, one of the main rationales for government subsidies for the cultural sector is to make the arts more accessible to the public. However, subsidies and grants have not succeeded in their goal to overcome this market failure. Museums are expensive cultural institutions and almost all of their expenditures go for preserving the collection, developing it by acquiring new objects, staff salaries, organizing special events and exhibitions. That is why they are forced to establish entrance fees in order to complement the government subsidy and to break even. Thus, these cultural institutions still can exclude part of the possible visitors due to high entrance fees. A way for cultural organisations to provide a fully public service, meaning that no one could be excluded from consumption and there is no rivalry among the customers of the service, is to remove any kind of fees that may limit the access. The reason why free entry is important is that art provides a reason for people to have something in common, something that unites them, and art participation exerts positive influence on the society. Moreover, no heritage is paid, so why should cultural one be? Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to examine how museums in the Netherlands can make their collections more accessible to the general public and to some underprivileged groups. Moreover, it elaborates on the issue of whether it is possible for museums to cover their costs with voluntary donations from visitors instead of admission revenues. The research studies state art museums and employs a mixed research strategy. Personal face-to-face interviews among visitors in three museums were conducted. The survey serves two main goals: measuring visitors’ willingness to pay (to donate) through contingent valuation method and drawing a profile of the public. On the qualitative side, a discourse analysis was performed, as well as an interview with the Marketing Manager of the Van Gogh Museum. The results show that currently there is no unanimous practice for facilitating access among the museums, because each of them has a different focus, based on the specific circumstances in its environment. The admission barrier could not be removed, since the attitudes among museum-goers do not allow generating the needed amount through a donation model. A great limitation of the research proves to be the use of the contingent valuation method, which in this case does not provide reliable results that reflect the specificities of each of the researched museums, so it forces a worst-case scenario to be developed. However, the research does not examine models where the lost revenues of admission fees might be replaced with other income sources and income-generating strategies.