MET MUSEUM SUED!?

November 15, 2012, 2:20 pm

Met Museum Is Being Sued Over Admission Fees

By RANDY KENNEDY

Karsten Moran for The New York Times The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Two members of the Metropolitan Museum of Art have sued the museum, contending that it misleads the public into thinking that its admission fees – $25 for adults, and less for seniors and students – are mandatory and not simply suggested. (The museum’s original lease with the city specified that it had to be accessible free of charge several days of the week, but the museum says that changes in city policy in the 1970s allowed it to institute a voluntary admission fee.)
The museum members, Theodore Grunewald and Patricia Nicholson, who filed suit in state court in Manhattan, argue in court papers that the museum makes it difficult to understand the fee policy, a practice intended to “deceive and defraud” the public. The suit, reported by The New York Post, cites a survey commissioned by Mr. Grunewald and Ms. Nicholson in which more than 360 visitors to the museum were asked if they knew the fee was optional; 85 percent of visitors responded that they believed they were required to pay. Their suit asks the court to prevent the museum from charging any fees.
Signs above the museum’s admissions desks include the word “Recommended” in small type below the word “Admission,” and on the museum’s Web site, an additional phrase is included: “To help cover the costs of exhibitions, we ask that you please pay the full recommended amount.” (There is no extra charge for entry to special exhibitions; 250,000 New York City schoolchildren visit for free each year as part of the museum’s programs.) When the recommended fee was first instituted in the 1970s, signs over the cashiers’ desks included the phrase: “Pay what you wish, but you must pay something.”
Harold Holzer, a spokesman for the museum, called the suit “entirely frivolous.”