NYers Free Admission

Reciprocity, recognition, free admission for all New Yorkers!

Since 1971, free access to New York City art, culture, science, nature and history institutions legislated under state statute, was ceded to city authority when The Metropolitan Museum of Art introduced its pay-what-you-wish but you-must-pay-something policy. Other institutions inappropriately followed The Met’s lead and New Yorkers free admission rights were reduced to fee policies approved by the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs [DCLA] offering discounted admission or occasional free days.

City leaders and the stewards of these institutions know that free admission is a reciprocity owed to New Yorkers in exchange for each institution’s rent-free use of city-owned park land and buildings and the Free Admission campaign asks New Yorkers to urge state and city leaders to enforce controlling state laws.

In the mid-1800s, Andrew Greene, a park governor and president of the City’s Board of Education, planted the idea of a “Park Education Campus” for what would become Central Park. He knew New Yorkers would need a quid pro quo in exchange for the park land purge involved. A collaboration whereby all New Yorkers would be able to walk through the park with seamless, free entry to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History and several others that would line its perimeter, creating a campus that would act as a supplement to the City’s growing public education system is needed.

Central Park would be a decades-long enterprise and an enormous pull on the public purse. Greene’s education roots helped conjure up a noteworthy bargain: in exchange for rent-free use of public parkland and buildings and other subsidies for the 17 campus institutions exceeds $1.2 billion annually, and New Yorkers are not admitted free.

Currently, that original public–private partnership has been broken and buried beneath half measures. The Free Admission Campaign is dedicated to ensuring that all New Yorkers know about their lawful rights to free admission, to insisting that the state codify and enforce existing laws, and to demanding compliance, reciprocity, transparency and accountability from the City and its cultural institutions.