Museums adviser May Calil remembers when Tony Blair's Labour government introduced universal free access to national museums 25 years ago – a policy credited with increasing visitor and tourist numbers.
“The museum sector is at the heart of British soft power, it contributes to diplomacy, education and civic pride,” she told The National. “Having free access turned museums into civic spaces, making them more than cultural institutions.”
That could all change as the UK's Department for Culture, Media and Sports announced last week that it was looking to charge overseas tourists for their visits to these publicly-funded institutions, including the British Museum and the Natural History Museum.
It is part of a package of reforms to support the financing of arts institutions. It comes as British mayors are also setting out the guidelines for a nightly tourist tax in some cities. Today, the UK remains an outlier, with institutions like the Paris’ Louvre recently increasing their non-EU visitor fees to 37 euros.
Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) director Tristram Hunt last month called for the proceeds of a tourist tax on hotel rooms to be allocated to national museums, while keeping the policy of free museum entry.
“Not only is a hotel tax critical for our long-term viability, I would argue that in London half of the resulting funds should be specifically allocated to free-entry institutions, perhaps proportionally to the number of foreign visitors,” Mr Hunt wrote in The Independent.
The V&A, British Museum and the Science Museum are among the 15 national museums and galleries that are sponsored by the DCMS, and £480m from the government in 2024-25 to ensure free access to their permanent collections.
She pointed to new spaces like V&A Storehouse in East London, which is part of a regeneration programme for the area and has communities at the heart of its programme. "As a result of austerity and the erosion of youth clubs and provisions by councils, arts organisations have, in certain cases, picked up the slack and provided programming for young people," she said.
While London’s major museums would likely benefit financially from charging visitors, this would not be an option for smaller and regional museums, who rely on Arts Council England funding and private donors. "When tourism in regional cities is driven by things like sport or events, museums and cultural venues are often secondary attractions – so once there’s a price barrier, they are far easier for visitors to pass over.”
This was also the case for lesser known non-commercial art galleries, which serve as “incubators” for emerging artists who could one day become the subjects of exhibitions at one of the major museums.
She pointed to the Chisenhale Gallery, where she is a trustee, which championed artists that are now household names like Cornelia Parker and Turner Prize winner Lawrence Abu Hamdan. She believed it would be difficult for galleries like Chisenhale to charge entrance fees.
Ms Calil cofounded the strategic consultancy Marks / Calil for museums and arts businesses.
British museum conservation standards and expertise are still desired overseas, she added. Keir Starmer took a delegation of British museum directors to China in February, which led to the announcement that works from the Shanghai Art Collection Museum would be exhibited in Liverpool’s World Museum – among others.
Reports earlier this year suggested that the Treasury had pressured DCMS to end free entry for international visitors as part of spending cuts in the Autumn budget. The department also modelled and considered ending free entry for all visitors, according to LBC.
Ms Calil believed it would be “challenging” for a Labour government to end the free entry programmes. “It would fall into a story about austerity,” she said.
The current consultations for a tourist tax would see cities charge £2 per person per night for hotel and bed and breakfast stays.
Ms Calil said that it was important for cultural institutions to benefit from the levy. “We need to make sure and fight that the institutions that attract people to a city are the ones getting funding from the levy,” she said, adding that “Mayors must commit to giving it to organisations that are a draw.”
This includes cultural landmarks that are not typically considered museums, such as London’s Tower Bridge.
The proposal to end free access to international visitors was made in DCMS’s response on Thursday to Baroness Hodge’s damning report of Arts Council England, the body that distributes funding.
Ms Hodge had proposed a series of reforms to ACE in December, which included simplifying funding applications and protecting ACE from politicisation.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said that culture was still “not equally distributed”. "But in this last, lost decade the arts has been treated as an unaffordable luxury, or worse – a nuisance or a weapon for governments in their continuing, exhausting culture wars,” she said.
"We must seize the opportunity we have to build a culture sector that works for the whole country and provides the tonic we need in the face of division.”
