The power of FREE
Free museums. Free transit. Mayor Wu works to include all in the life of the city.
“Free” has permeated the political agenda of Michelle Wu — first with the MBTA and now with museums.
It’s the kind of big idea that feels like a political pipe dream. That is, until Wu makes her case and makes it happen.
Few of us could have predicted back in 2019, when she was a city councilor, that her viral Globe op-ed “Forget fare hikes — make the T free” would spark a movement for fare-free transit across the Commonwealth. Today more than a dozen municipalities, including Boston, are experimenting with free fares on some bus routes.
Now comes Wu’s push for free admission to museums and cultural institutions, an initiative underway in other cities, including the Los Angeles area and San Francisco. The idea has long been talked about in Boston, but she’s the first mayor to make a go of it.
During her State of the City address last week, she announced that starting in February, Boston Public Schools families can enjoy free admission to the Boston Children’s Museum, Museum of Science, Institute of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, New England Aquarium, and the Franklin Park Zoo on the first and second Sunday of each month.
BPS serves a majority-minority population of about 45,000 students. Each student can bring up to three family members on free admission days. Thousands of people are expected to participate in the pilot that will run through August.
The city of Boston has set aside about $300,000 from federal pandemic relief funds to launch the program. Meanwhile, the Wu administration is raising hundreds of thousands of dollars from philanthropic and corporate sponsors so it can extend the pilot.
Some of you may be scratching your head: Many museums already offer discounted programs and free admission days so what’s the big deal here?
Wu is making it easy.
Raising two young children in Boston, the mayor told museum leaders that she was struck by how cumbersome their programs to increase access were as families tried to determine if they qualified for free admission and which days the discounts were available.
Growing up in Chicago, she recalled how easy it was for her immigrant mother, who had little money and spoke little English, to figure out that every Tuesday the big downtown art museum was free.
For Wu, making cultural institutions accessible is part of her equity agenda, a way to make the city more inclusive by eliminating the economic barriers that keep families in Mattapan, Roxbury, or East Boston from venturing into the Seaport District or downtown. Admission to the children’s museum can be $22 a visitor; the aquarium is $34.
“This is unique. This has never happened before,” said Boston Children’s Museum CEO Carole Charnow. “What’s different about this is the uniformity of it, the ease of it, the marketing messaging to Boston Public Schools.”
The Wu administration began working on a pilot a year ago, first meeting with the four family-focused institutions: the children’s museum, science museum, aquarium, and zoo. During the pandemic, these organizations forged a bond developing reopening plans after COVID-19 shut their doors. They’ve worked closely ever since.
The city hired a consultant to help the organizations evaluate how a public-private partnership might work. Later in the process, the city brought in the ICA and the MFA, and by the end of the year, the organizations agreed to do a pilot.
Typically, these organizations build free and discounted programs into their budgets. Having BPS as a partner would help them extend their reach because the school system can do a better job disseminating information, including the ability to communicate the message in 10 languages.
“This is catalytic,” said New England Aquarium CEO Vikki Spruill.
For Tim Ritchie, president of the Museum of Science, Wu using her bully pulpit to offer a vision of free museum admissions as a “birthright” for Boston children could transform cultural organizations.
“Who knows? Maybe other mayors will say, ‘Wow, you know what, maybe that would be a birthright for our children, too, in Somerville or Cambridge,’ ” said Ritchie. “That would be a really great thing if it happened that this act of leadership would then produce similar kinds of thinking throughout cities and throughout the Commonwealth.”
I would add business leaders and philanthropists to that list too. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to eliminate other financial concerns too by subsidizing parking and meals to make an outing in the city truly affordable?
Like freeing the T, Wu is onto something. Just last summer, Harvard Art Museums began waiving its entrance fees. I expect momentum to build with GBH executive arts editor Jared Bowen, who has been one of the region’s biggest evangelists of “free.”
“There is a way for this to happen,” Bowen said on a December episode of his radio program “The Culture Show.” “It’s not just about the art museums to find a way.
This is about our community to find a way, for foundations, for philanthropists ... [to] put your money where your mouth is because it changes the game if everybody feels comfortable being able to go in the door whenever they want.”
One of the most poignant moments of Wu’s State of the City speech came when she unveiled the free museum program. She talked about being taken in her pink stroller to Chicago’s Art Institute on free admission days to look at paintings.
“And, in this moment, this mom with no money and no words in this language feels like the best mom on earth because she has given her daughter the world for a day,” Wu said.
Now Wu can give another kid the same chance to go beyond their own neighborhood — and maybe they can think big and boldly enough to grow up to be the mayor of Boston.