'Bout time! Pdx Art Museum Just Got Cheaper

I'll never forget the first time I went to the Portland Art Museum on my lunch hour.  How cool that I worked so close and could stop in at lunch, see a thing or two, then head back to the ol' cube.  Well, turned out to be not so cool because it was so expensive I didn't even go in.  I mean, for all that money I'd need to spend the whole day in there (or more!), not 45 minutes.  I was so ticked at the time I actually looked up admission fees in other cities - like San Francisco and New York and, much to my surprise, they were cheaper!!  No joke.  The SF MoMA was more affordable than our little gem.

Well good news, mamas!  This cultural resource just got a whole lot more family-friendly and just plain accessible - for people of all incomes.  As Susan Nielsen reported in the Sunday O, starting this Spring  (so soon!) admission will be FREE to all kids under 17.  And,the museum will now open its doors to all for free four Saturdays and 12 Thursday evenings each year. 

Thanks to the new Executive Director for making it a priority to expand access and to some very generous donors for making it happen.  This also shows how when you package something just right, the support comes rolling in. 

Comments

[rae ann]

oh thank god. i'm a native portlander and have only been once in my adult life because of the cost. i've heard that some libraries have a membership card that you can check out in order to get in for free, but i'm not sure if it was in multnomah co. or not...

[k]

One of the things that is rarely mentioned is WHY other cities' museums are cheaper. They are cheaper because large companies donate hundreds of thousands to the museums in those cities and sponsor free days. The admission isn't really cheaper; it's just that the tab is being picked up by corporations.

Why is it so difficult for the same thing to happen in Portland? Because we don't have many company headquarters here (and the HQs are the ones who pick up the tabs for things like this). Oregon has ONE Fortune 500 company headquartered here, Nike. Nike donates to A LOT but they can't be expected to pick up the tab for everything. Smaller mom & pop companies (which make up the majority of Oregon's businesses) can't afford to do what the Nikes of the world can.

PAM simply doesn't have the resources at the tips of its fingers like museums in NYC, San Francisco and other cities.

As an aside, this is also the reason the Rose Garden has such a difficult time selling boxes and why Major League Baseball will never locate here (selling boxes & the name of the facility is what makes arenas feasible -- not ticket prices). I don't care about either but it's related to the lack of businesses so I figured I'd throw it into my comment.

[olivia]

I agree with the need for big biz to be here in Portland and/or Oregon to help support services like this. It is also considered a public service to provide accessible services such as art institutions, and I believe that government and municipalities, to some extent, should provide for these services. The City of New York has a Department of Cultural Institutions, and city/state (and maybe federal) funds are used to support the local public institutions include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, at which admission is a suggested donation. I wish that Portland would also support public art institutions as if they were like other public services.