The UK government says national museums in England will remain free for all, ending months of speculation that international visitors could be charged to enter institutions such as the British Museum, Tate and National Museums Liverpool.<\/p>\n
The announcement was made on Monday (28 September) by the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), Lisa Nandy, at an event hosted by Art Fund and the think tank the Cultural Policy Unit at Tate Liverpool. Universal free entry to the UK\u2019s 15 national museums, which came into effect on 1 December 2001 will celebrate its 25th anniversary later this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur museums are the places that light up the world,\u201d Nandy said. \u201cThey remind of us our shared history and enable us to step outside the confines of our lives. There is something incredibly special about that.\u00a0That\u2019s why they must be free, forever, for everyone to access. I\u2019m delighted that we\u2019re continuing that transformative policy pioneered by the last Labour government, opening up access to our excellent museums for generations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alison Cole, the director of the Cultural Policy Unit, which has campaigned for UK museums to remain free for all,\u00a0said in a statement:\u00a0\u201cThis is one of the landmark cultural policies of our times, one that has established itself as a universal public good.\u201d (Cole<\/a> was formerly the editor of The Art Newspaper.) Several national museum directors, including Tristram Hunt of the Victoria and Albert Museum and Nicholas Cullinan of the British Museum, also supported the move in a statement.<\/p>\n Gabriele Finaldi, the director of London\u2019s National Gallery, said: \u201cFree entry to national museums is one of the UK\u2019s greatest cultural assets: it enables millions to visit, enjoy and learn. Thanks to free entry our museums are a deeply integral part of national life and free entry to museums is widely admired among our museum peers internationally.\u201d <\/p>\n The DCMS re-ignited the discussions around introducing charges for tourists in its response to a review of Arts Council England (ACE) by the Labour peer Margaret Hodge, who published her recommendations<\/a> regarding the future of ACE last December.<\/p>\n Some cultural figures are concerned though about the policy. In July 2024 Mark Jones, the former interim director of the British Museum, said that an admission fee of \u00a320 should be introduced for overseas visitors.<\/p>\n How the UK government will continue to fund national museums is open to debate. Earlier this month the UK government\u2019s decision to grant\u00a0regional mayors in England\u00a0the power to introduce a\u00a0\u201ctourist tax\u201d (officially an Overnight Visitor Levy, or OVL)\u00a0was welcomed by some UK cultural leaders who stress that revenue raised should be ring-fenced for arts and culture<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UK government says national museums in England will remain free for all, ending months of speculation that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":785693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,42223,10345,56,44208,54,55],"class_list":["post-785692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-museum-entry-fees","tag-museums-heritage","tag-uk","tag-uk-politics","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}