The price of a treasure

The 7 million annual visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the nation’s greatest cultural institution and the city’s top tourist draw, are a bunch of lousy cheapskates. So stingy are we with the pay-what-you-wish policy that steadily eroding admissions revenue has spurred the museum to require all foreigners, include Jerseyites, to fork over the full $25 fee, starting in March. Only New York State residents will still be allowed to pay as little as a penny.

This is the world we created. Ever since 1970, the Met has had a suggested-admission policy. For much of that time, people ponied up something close to what the museum kindly asked. In 2004, 63% paid the full suggested $12. Then the recommended price went up, and the share of people paying it went down, and down, and down. In 2008, nearly half paid the full $20. By 2012, a third of visitors dug that deep, a rate that held when they hiked suggested fee to $25 — same as MoMA’s ticket price — in 2013.

Now, fewer than one in five visitors pays full freight, averaging $9. It’s an unsustainable trend, even for an institution with thousands of paid members and a $3 billion endowment.

Equivalent institutions like the Louvre, the Hermitage, the Prada and the British Museum either get big support from their national governments, charge mandatory admissions or both.

The new policy is cooked up by Met boss Daniel Weiss, who’s also slashing spending where he can. He has approval of the city, which owns the building and provides $29 million in annual support.

We’re all for letting city taxpayers of modest means pay what they can. It’s our museum, after all. But why it makes sense to extend the almostfree ride to Bob from Buffalo we don’t get. Nor do we understand why it’s fair to make Jane from Jersey City, who might work in the city and come in on weekends with her family, pay full freight.

This is line-drawing far more arbitrary than anything you’d see in a Mondrian.

Meantime, expect the new system to unleash a black market of hometown hustlers buying tickets for a penny and selling them to non-New Yorkers. Or an app trading in full-pay receipts, which are good for three days of entry.

But the masses aren’t the only tightwads. Mayor de Blasio and Cultural Commissioner Affairs Tom Finkelpearl are part of the problem too. They want to steal — er, redirect — up to $3 million in public funds from the Met for other arts groups.

We are sure that there are some dandy dance troupes and puppet theaters. But there’s only one Met. We love it, and if you do, you should pay up.