Yep no inflation, raising prices because of "escalating costs in virtually all aspects of operating the museum". Yep no inflation according to BUBBLE ben bernanke! MoMA to raise admission fee Associated Press NEW YORK â Soon it'll cost more to see the great artworks at New York City's Museum of Modern Art. MoMA says it will raise its mandatory adult admission to $25 from $20 on Sept. 1. It says it's due to escalating costs in virtually all aspects of operating the museum. There has been no increase since 2004. Admission for visitors 16 years old and under will continue to be free. The fee for full time students will be $14 and $18 for senior citizens. The city's Metropolitan Museum of Art recently also raised its suggested price to $25 from $20.
No inflation. Right... What about hyperinflation? http://www.shadowstats.com/article/hyperinflation-special-report-2011 "the Fedâs formal monetization of U.S. Treasury debt aimed at debasing the U.S. dollar; the sharpest post-World War II annual decline in broad money growth; the pronouncement of an official end to the 2007 recession despite no meaningful recovery; passage of the Administrationâs health insurance legislation; and the mid-term election. Nonetheless, the outlook has changed little. With the passage of 15 months since the last report (updated circumstances have been covered regularly in weekly Commentaries), events just have moved this pending ultimate financial crisis into much closer time proximity."
People still don't get it. We are in a deflationary cycle with engineered short term inflation. Inflate, spend on debt or die is bernanke's mantra.
They probably raise prices because they can get away with it. Most art museums world are chronically underfunded and wide suffer from a lack of paying visitors in the first place and don't have a chance in hell in improving revenues through price increases -- even if there was "huge" inflation.
Hmmmmmm, I wonder what fraction of income earned by an average American's is spent on museum tickets?
And what does your newly hiked MOMA fee go to pay for? Museum Director Glenn D. Lowry lives in a rent-free $6 million apartment above the museum. "Glenn D. Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art for nearly 12 years, has long been one of the highest-paid museum officials in the country, with salary, bonus and benefits totaling $1.28 million in the year that ended June 30, 2005, the most recent period for which figures are publicly available. Yet for more than eight years, his income was even higher than the museum reported in its tax forms, thanks to a trust created by two of the museumâs wealthiest trustees, David Rockefeller and Agnes Gund. Between 1995 and 2003, that trust paid him a total of $5.35 million â in amounts ranging from $35,800 to $3.5 million a year â aside from the compensation supplied by the museum." http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/16/arts/design/16moma.html Plenty of complaints about Wall Street greed, but you have to love the nonprofit greed.
For comparison in the UK most museums were made free in 2001. Read one of the articles below that illustrate what came out of it. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/why-museums-must-stay-free-453620.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1306644.stm http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/06/tristram-hunt-entrance-fees-museums