Displaying items by tag: tickets

Since it opened this spring at the Tate Modern in London, “Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs" has been a blockbuster, with lines forming most mornings despite timed tickets. Once the show ends on Sept. 7, officials there estimate it will have been seen by well over 460,000 people, the same number of visitors who attended “Matisse Picasso” in 2002, the Tate Modern’s most popular show ever.

Next it will head to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where it will be on view from Oct. 12 through Feb. 8. The museum is bracing for crowds and it too will offer timed tickets, which go on sale Friday on moma.org. Members do not need timed tickets and may attend anytime. (Unlike the Tate, which is free but charges £18.00 — about $30.50 — for the special exhibition, MoMA does not charge for special exhibitions but admission to the museum is $25, $18 for 65+ and $14 for students.)

The iconic colorful metal buttons that have served at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s admission tickets since 1971 are no more. Due to the rising cost of the tin-plate pins, the museum will employ a new paper ticket system that will include detachable stickers, which will serve as proof of admission. The buttons will be discontinued on Monday, July 1, the same day that the Met will switch to a seven-day-a-week schedule. It was previously closed on Mondays.

The Met’s admission buttons have become a symbol of New York City culture and a popular souvenir for tourists. Their badge’s most recent iteration features an “M” appropriated from a 16^th century woodcut based on a Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) drawing. After the Met introduced their unique admission tokens over 40 years ago, a number of institutions followed suit and they are now commonplace in museums around the world.

In addition to bringing production costs down from 3 cents per button to 1 cent per paper ticket, the new system will also be more environmentally friendly.