{"text":[[{"start":6.04,"text":"At the British Museum last week, King Charles was taken aback by the climactic scene of the 70-metre Bayeux Tapestry."}],[{"start":12.56,"text":"“Oh dear,” he said, coming to the embroidery’s depiction of the death of England’s last Anglo-Saxon ruler, Harold Godwinson, by an arrow to the eye at the Battle of Hastings in 1066."}],[{"start":23.6,"text":"“You killed our king!” a British official scolded Emmanuel Macron, who was alongside the King and UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham at the grand unveiling of the near 1,000-year-old work in London. “I won’t do it again,” quipped France’s president, according to a person present at the exchange."}],[{"start":40.88,"text":"To see the tapestry, which is billed as a “special exhibition” and open to the public from this week, adults must pay up to £33. Access to the world’s first public national museum and its 8mn-strong permanent collection is otherwise free. The same is true for England’s 14 other national museums and galleries."}],[{"start":59.88,"text":"But the future of the universal free admission model — which costs taxpayers about £485mn a year — is in doubt after UK ministers proposed in March to make overseas visitors pay at the front door."}],[{"start":72.36,"text":"The British government is now formally exploring the policy alongside the group of 15 museums, which welcomed 19.4mn overseas visitors and 22.6mn domestic visitors in 2024-25."}],[{"start":85.64,"text":"At a time when the UK’s public finances are squeezed, the government is looking to the tourism industry as a means of raising revenue. This week, it said mayors and council leaders in England would be able to charge unlimited taxes on overnight stays."}],[{"start":100.28,"text":"Ministers said in March that charging could support the “long-term financial resilience” of the 15 institutions. Yet the proposal is roundly opposed by museum chiefs. They argue that free admission has widened access to culture and that fees risk leaving them worse off if foreigners holidaying in an already expensive country decide against a visit."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":119.6,"text":"Nicholas Cullinan, director of the British Museum, says free entry “changed my life [as a child]”. Roland Rudd, chair of the Tate network of galleries, thinks “putting up barriers to entry is ultimately self-defeating”. The move “would be extremely short-sighted”, according to Lord Tony Hall, chair of the Natural History Museum. Nat Edwards, director-general and master of the Royal Armouries in Leeds, calls it “small-minded and frankly xenophobic”."}],[{"start":149.04,"text":"Although some smaller museums in Britain do charge, its best-known venues are outliers. The Louvre in Paris asks adults from inside the European Economic Area for €22 and, as of January, for €32 from others, to help fund a major renovation. A trip to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam costs €25. The Met in New York charges $30. To see Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus at Florence’s Uffizi, visitors pay €29."}],[{"start":178.24,"text":"In England, in lieu of admission fees, “self-generated income” from special exhibitions, events and gift shop sales has become increasingly important for the 15 national institutions, which are directly supported by the state."}],[{"start":192.58,"text":"Government funding fell by 16 per cent in real terms between 2021-22 and 2024-25 — although it remained 12 per cent above the average in the three years before the pandemic — while the museums’ expenditure rose by 18 per cent over the same period, says the National Audit Office, the public spending watchdog."}],[{"start":212.84,"text":"Some sector veterans and donors back a change. Sir Mark Jones, who stepped down in 2024 as interim head of the British Museum, where visitors are mostly from outside the UK, says “at a time when government money is relatively short it would be a good thing to consider charging tourists” so museums can “invest and enlarge what they do”."}],[{"start":232.16,"text":"Sir Peter Bazalgette, former chair of Arts Council England, the arm’s-length funding body, says “it makes sense to reciprocate; people quite happily pay for museums across Europe”. In London, tourists are used to paying for access to historical sites and attractions such as Hampton Court Palace and the Tower of London."}],[{"start":250.32,"text":"But, given the broad funding pressures, most museum leaders believe that charging tourists would be a sticking-plaster solution for only a small portion of the sector."}],[{"start":260.4,"text":"Laura Pye, chair of the National Museum Directors’ Council, which speaks for museum leaders, says that beyond the practical difficulties of identifying an overseas tourist at the door, the idea poses “philosophical challenges”."}],[{"start":274.12,"text":"“How do you make someone from Greece pay to see the Parthenon Sculptures?” she says, of the contested artefacts kept in the British Museum. “If the government wants a thriving museums sector, what we need is more money into the whole system. Robbing Peter to pay Paul isn’t the answer.”"}],[{"start":291.96,"text":"‘Somebody has to pay’"}],[{"start":293.68,"text":"When the British Museum was founded in 1753 to house Hans Sloane’s vast collection of objects from around the world, lawmakers said entry should be free for “all studious and curious persons”."}],[{"start":305.28,"text":"Distinct though they are in focus and size — the Natural History Museum has more than 1,000 staff versus roughly 60 at the Museum of the Home in Hoxton, east London — that sentiment has served as a blueprint for all of England’s national museums and galleries since."}],[{"start":321.92,"text":"It also inspired the US Congress when, almost a century later, the Smithsonian Institution was set up “for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men”. Today, 20 of its 21 museums — including all those in Washington DC — offer free admission."}],[{"start":337.12,"text":"On the first day of 1974, Edward Heath’s Conservative government ended the tradition in England, bringing in a standard entry charge for all adults of 10p, about £1 in today’s money. The experiment was brief — it was scrapped in March 1974, after Labour returned to power the previous month. But it was impactful."}],[{"start":358.16,"text":"Across the board visits declined, in some cases sharply. The National Portrait Gallery, for instance, welcomed 14,006 people in January 1974, down from 30,750 in January 1973. In three months, the gallery generated £2,310 but spent more than twice that sum on staffing and ticket machines."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":382.24,"text":"In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government gave museum trustees the option of levying charges. While the British Museum and the National Gallery stayed free, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Science Museum were among those to require entry fees or impose a “voluntary donation”. In December 2001, universal free entry was reintroduced by Lord Chris Smith, then Labour culture secretary."}],[{"start":408.52,"text":"In the years since, as demands on the public purse have grown and competition has increased internationally, the group of 15 has had to embrace mixed-income models."}],[{"start":418.72,"text":"Exact figures vary, but in 2024-25, 46 per cent of their income on average came from the government, according to the audit office. Self-generated income, which also includes donations and legacies, soared 53 per cent to £563mn between 2021-22 and 2024-25."}],[{"start":439.96,"text":"Last December, an independent review of the Arts Council by former culture minister Baroness Margaret Hodge said ministers should look at charges for international visitors. When it responded in March, the government accepted her proposal."}],[{"start":453.88,"text":"Hodge’s suggestion was predicated, she wrote, on digital ID cards “achiev[ing] universal coverage”, in a move that “would align the UK with other countries, such as New Zealand and Singapore, that charge an entry fee to international visitors whilst retaining free entry for citizens and residents”."}],[{"start":471.12,"text":"Sir Keir Starmer’s government made no mention of digital ID cards in its response to her review, and Burnham has since abandoned them. “Without IDs, it’s absolutely not feasible. It will be discriminatory,” Hodge says."}],[{"start":484.16,"text":"Smith, the former culture secretary, says the push for charging “has come from the Treasury . . . They thought it would be an easy and attractive way of raising money, given the difficult fiscal picture."}],[{"start":495.08,"text":"“But of course for the museums that did charge, the Treasury would just claw back a portion of the grant-in-aid that they give them,” he adds. “So we would not see a new dawn for the sector, just a fall-off in visitors, reputational strength and soft power.”"}],[{"start":508.44,"text":"The Louvre is the most visited museum in the world despite its entry fees, which date back a century. A 2016 study by consultancy DC Research for the Association of Independent Museums found that institutions in the UK “that do currently charge for admissions most commonly report that this has no impact on visitor numbers”."}],[{"start":529.2,"text":"Nevertheless, many national museum chiefs are concerned that “friction” on arrival could deter domestic visitors who are not habitual museum-goers and that charging would undermine the country’s attempt to tell global histories through its collections."}],[{"start":544.12,"text":"Caro Howell, director-general of the Imperial War Museums, says the credibility of her institution’s focus on “stories of service, sacrifice and resilience by nations and individuals from the Commonwealth as well as Britain” rests in part on ensuring “as many people as possible can access them”."}],[{"start":562,"text":"“The idea of charging a Holocaust survivor to visit the Holocaust Galleries is grotesque,” she adds."}],[{"start":568.48,"text":"Government officials have already told Pye, who is also director of National Museums Liverpool, that if overseas visitors were forced to pay for entry, the city’s International Slavery Museum would be exempt. “The suggestion that I’d be charging visitors from the Caribbean feels very wrong,” she says."}],[{"start":584.92,"text":"But Jones, who previously ran the V&A and proposed the “heretical idea” of an entry fee of £20 per head when he left the British Museum, believes there is “something a little bit unattractive about the kind of idea that Britain is rendered morally superior” by its aversion to tourist charges."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":602.64,"text":"“It’s no more outrageous that the Louvre, whose collections also come from a wide range of countries, should charge than the British Museum should charge,” he says. “Somebody has to pay. Who is that going to be? What conception of equity leads one to the conclusion that British taxpayers, many of whom are not museum visitors and many of whom are less well off than foreign tourists, must subsidise foreign tourists?”"}],[{"start":625.04,"text":"Bazalgette, who cautions that decisions on charging should be down to museums, maintains that the system of free entry “wasn’t fashioned for visitors to the country; it was fashioned for Brits”."}],[{"start":635.36,"text":"Of similar mind is Dame Vivien Duffield, who has donated about £185mn to arts institutions and charities around the UK, including 14 of the 15 national museums. “With everything else the government has to pay for, especially the NHS . . . I simply don’t understand why foreigners shouldn’t pay, and I really don’t see why well-off Brits shouldn’t pay either,” she says."}],[{"start":660.96,"text":"“If I thought even fewer people could come to museums [with the introduction of charging], I would pay for the people who really couldn’t afford to go.”"}],[{"start":669,"text":"Modelling by the culture department forecasts that several bigger museums in London stand to gain financially from charging international visitors, say three people familiar with the data."}],[{"start":679.84,"text":"But it also projects a decline in the number of domestic visitors if entry fees for overseas visitors come into force."}],[{"start":687.16,"text":"Sir Nicholas Serota, who stepped down as chair of the Arts Council this summer, says charges risk hurting the wider museum ecosystem. “If national museums start to charge, then many local authority museums, which are struggling badly, might feel the need to follow suit,” he says. “That would shut people out.”"}],[{"start":705.4,"text":"The UK culture department had no comment."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":705.9,"text":"Tourist pounds"}],[{"start":709.74,"text":"With sources of self-generated income “vulnerable to wider economic factors”, according to the audit office, many museum leaders have backed another charge: a levy on overnight stays in England, part of the government’s push for fiscal devolution."}],[{"start":723.8,"text":"V&A head Sir Tristram Hunt told the FT in January that 80 per cent of revenues from “tourist taxes” in London should be ringfenced for the cultural sector."}],[{"start":733.64,"text":"The levy — which mimics charges in cultural hubs including Paris, Amsterdam and Florence, whose big museums also charge — would raise more than £1.2bn a year if set at 3 per cent of the average room rate, according to research by the Cultural Policy Unit, a think-tank that wants to see universal free entry maintained."}],[{"start":753.14,"text":"But mayors and council leaders will decide how money raised from the levy — which will not be capped — is spent in their areas, meaning cultural organisations may lose out to high streets and local transport."}],[{"start":764.32,"text":"Bernard Donoghue, head of industry body Alva, says both the levy and the museum charging proposal have been put forward “in complete isolation from a comprehensive tourism strategy by the government” and would compound the end of VAT-free shopping for tourists, which was phased out in 2021."}],[{"start":782.68,"text":"“Culture, heritage, visitor attractions are the integral heart of the UK tourism visitor economy. Hotels are built next to museums and galleries, not the other way around,” he says. “Any rise in the cost of visiting puts people off the UK.”"}],[{"start":798.36,"text":"In her review, Hodge urged the Arts Council to work with ministers to “create a specific long-term plan for museums”. Burnham’s appointment of Baroness Ruth Mackenzie, a former theatre director, as arts minister has boosted hopes that he is serious about the sector."}],[{"start":813.56,"text":"Smith, the former culture secretary, is somewhat optimistic. He recalls that when he was seeking to reinstate free entry in the late 1990s, Mackenzie and Burnham were among his special advisers. In fact, they shared an office. At the same time, in Downing Street, James Purnell was working on the policy. He went on to serve as culture secretary and is chief of staff in Number 10 these days."}],[{"start":838.08,"text":"“Although Ruth Mackenzie and I led on the policy, Burnham was an enabler, and the three of them now form a powerful trio with a commitment to culture at its heart,” Smith says. “I very much hope they will do the right thing and get rid of this really stupid idea.”"}],[{"start":852.4,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1789262491_4141.mp3"}