Macron’s Louvre proposal sparks debate on tourist fees for museums

In its recent article, The Guardian highlights ongoing debates surrounding museum funding and access. Should overseas tourists be required to pay for entry to world-renowned cultural institutions? 

Five years after Brexit, another unexpected consequence arises: the opportunity to contribute to the renovation of the Louvre. French President Emmanuel Macron has proposed funding the museum's "renaissance" by raising entrance fees for visitors from outside the EU.

Initially, some media outlets, like the Mail, portrayed this as a direct insult, suggesting that "Brits will have to pay more than EU residents." However, even staunchly pro-Brexit publications have come to accept that this policy targets all non-EU visitors, not just Britons – a clever move by the French, even if it's seen as a subtle form of retaliation.

For Britons, this fee increase serves as yet another reminder of their Brexit victory, one that follows in the footsteps of the UK's exit from the Erasmus program and the deteriorating prospects for British musicians. Meanwhile, the current prime minister seems more focused on cementing his own potentially disastrous legacy: overseeing a UK environment in irreversible decline.

Macron's idea was foreshadowed last summer by British curator Sir Mark Jones, who suggested that London’s national collections could fund improvements by charging admission fees to overseas visitors aged 25 and over. After the British Museum overlooked multiple thefts from its collections, Jones briefly served as interim director (while the museum’s chairman, the austerity-driven financier George Osborne, remained in place). In an interview with the Sunday Times, Jones argued that while admission should stay free for UK taxpayers, charging international tourists could generate funds for redevelopment, repairs, international collaborations, better salaries, and to ease overcrowding. He proposed that other major museums and galleries follow suit.

Since then, it has come to light that many of the workers directly dealing with mass tourism in these crowded spaces are among the lowest-paid employees in London. Striking security guards at the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, and the V&A are calling for a public boycott of the galleries throughout February. The United Voices of the World (UVW) union points to the Science Museum’s reported increase in both visitors and profits, while the V&A’s Tristram Hunt has highlighted a “successful financial return in secondary spend,” arguing this makes entrance fees unnecessary. It’s noteworthy that the security staff, provided by the contractor Wilson James, earn just £13.15 an hour, which is below the London Living Wage of £13.85.

The UK’s national museums are an anomaly in not charging for entry, as any British tourist will attest. “It would make sense,” Jones said, “for us to charge overseas visitors for admission to museums as they charge us when we visit their museums.” And largely, even when nationals and local residents are exempted, these museums do so without the accusations of xenophobia that are occasionally leveled at UK proponents of museum tourist-charging. When you see Venice’s older inhabitants being shoved out of vaporetti or run into by rucksacks, wheelie cases, and gurning selfie-takers, its two-tier approach seems like the least tourism can offer as compensation. New York’s Metropolitan Museum is similarly forgiven for its exemption, where the state’s residents decide their own fee.

That less generous capitals deny tourists free admission does not serve as an argument against the UK’s more hospitable entry policies, sometimes advertised with our NHS levels of national pride and piety. To bolster the case for universally free entry, supporters often cite the importance of welcoming visitors from countries that the colonising British stripped of future exhibits—an idea now better understood. Following Jones’s intervention, Prof David Abulafia argued in The Spectator against entrance fees: “These museums are custodians of their contents on behalf of all of mankind. This means that people from all countries of the world should be able to enter freely and see what these museums contain.”

However, the same argument (assuming you overlook how little is being asked of overseas tourists who have already covered the cost of getting there) applies to numerous museums, galleries, and churches that do charge for entry, often from everyone, as custodians of valuable but contested historic assets. With grand houses full of colonial trophies and evidence of domestic exploitation, the National Trust, for example, has even convinced the paying public to enjoy sites of ancestral servitude, such as old laundries and freezing attics.

Like the Louvre, the British Museum is under pressure to upgrade, and it is increasingly needing to collaborate. Where will the resources come from? That is, if there is no future for my own proposal: a £50 (for now) permit for in-gallery mobile phone/watch photography. It would only inconvenience the millions united by one belief: that there’s no universal treasure that can’t be improved – including for fellow visitors – by having their own face planted in front of it.

So, if not a Macron-style scheme, with insufficient state investment, what’s the alternative? While supporters of restitution and fair pay have been pushing for action from universal collections, other activists have taken issue with corporate funding, with campaigns against fossil fuel money, such as BP’s deal with the British Museum. The Science Museum is also under fire for its agreement with Adani Green Energy, part of a conglomerate investing in coal.

By Naila Huseynova