Audience sizes just aren’t what they used to be at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, where membership – once a dependable source of income – has declined by nearly 16 per cent since 2019, and attendance in June slumped by 26 per cent, from 89,600 to 65,900, over the same time frame.

What has increased is the cost of running the institution. A newly unionised workforce has bumped up salary expenses, while inflation is driving up the cost of everything from heating to shipping artworks, according to senior museum officials.

At the Guggenheim, leaders said that options for relief were limited after three years of managing the fiscal crisis of the pandemic. And so on Tuesday, the museum raised admission fees, bringing the cost of an adult ticket from US$25 to what is becoming the new normal for major museums: US$30.

The trend started last July, according to interviews with nearly two dozen cultural institutions, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art – New York’s largest art museum – raised its adult admission price to US$30, a US$5 increase. Others followed, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, with the Art Institute of Chicago now one of the most expensive tickets at US$32 for out-of-state visitors.

Marcus A Harshaw, a senior director of museum experience at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, who also teaches museum studies at Johns Hopkins University, said that museums have limited options for an economic fix. Large donations from corporations and philanthropists often come with restrictions that prevent officials from putting the money toward operating costs.

“There are over 35,000 museums in the United States,” he said. “I promise that 35,000 museums are trying to figure out how to earn more income at the gate or raise more contributions from their trustees and communities.”

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A recent survey by the non-profit American Alliance of Museums illustrates the potential for economic risk: It found that only one-third of museums have rebounded to pre-pandemic attendance levels, with two-thirds experiencing reduced attendance closer to 70 per cent. More than half predicted their profits to stay the same or decrease.

“While the museum field is making strides in its recovery efforts, it will take years to fully rebound to pre-pandemic levels of staffing, revenue and attendance,” said Brooke Leonard, the museum alliance’s interim CEO and chief of staff. NYTIMES