It was with mixed feelings that Athena heard the recent announcement by the Culture Secretary that national museums would ‘remain free for everyone’. The statement came in response to Baroness Hodges’s scathing review of the Arts Council last year, in which she suggested that consideration be given to charging international visitors for access to these institutions.
Her suggestion, it is important to underline, was predicated on the introduction of identity cards, which would have offered a straight-forward means of distinguishing between visitors and residents. The subsequent U-turn on identity cards effectively undermined the whole proposal and arguably made this response a foregone conclusion. That shouldn’t be allowed to obscure the fact that maintaining free access to national museums is not without its complications.
To be clear, in an ideal world, Athena would be delighted for these great institutions —indeed, national cultural institutions of all kinds — to be free for everyone. The problem is that we don’t live in that world. Instead, we have an extremely limited pot of Government money earmarked for culture that provides a small group of heavily visited museums, most of which are in London, with a disproportionate level of financial support. The cash that goes to them, meanwhile, is actually depriving other bodies of funding.
Take the example of English Heritage, which manages a national portfolio of historic monuments on behalf of the Secretary of State. In recent years, to save the Government money, it has been converted from a quango into a self-funding charity. The insistent fiction remains that the charity can be financially self-sufficient, yet, according to the annual report of 2024/25, in only three years its finances have departed from those set out in its optimistic strategic plan to the tune of £19.5 million. This is not a sustainable arrangement.
There are, meanwhile, ironies to the situation of the national museums themselves. The Government support they receive does constitute an essential core of funding. That said, it is already totally inadequate to their needs and has been steadily diminishing as a proportion of their revenue for years. Not only, therefore, do they need to raise ever larger sums from commercial activities, but they are completely dependent on private philanthropic gifts. Those are positive things, but, in the circumstances, can the state claim credit for keeping national museums free?
The Government is now a major financial contributor, rather than sole underwriter of these institutions. Added to which, at up to £33 per adult ticket for the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition, it’s not as if the museum’s work is completely free anyway. The slogan of free access for all to national museums has beguiled governments of all political stripes over the past quarter century. Its real costs, however, are not being properly counted. At the very least, in Athena’s view, international visitors should be paying their way. Or perhaps, at a deliberately modest level, so should we all.
This feature originally appeared in the October 14, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.