Displaying items by tag: membership

Starting January of next year, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s new municipal identification cards will not only help undocumented immigrants sign leases and meet photo ID requirements, but the cards will also be golden tickets into many of the city’s finest cultural institutions. 33 institutions belonging to the CIG (Cultural Institutions Group) will honor the Municipal ID as a one-year membership with benefits ranging from free admission to museum shop discounts. The 33 CIG members —all private nonprofit institutions on city property — include the Museum of Natural History, the New York Botanical Garden, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others.

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a new initiative in New York City this month, proposing a municipal identification card that could be available to all city inhabitants next year. The card would be beneficial to New Yorkers who don't have a driver's license or other form of official ID. In particular, undocumented individuals.

Well, according to The New York Times, another subset of the population may find the municipal IDs appealing: the art world. The Times reports that the card may come with free membership and discounted tickets to cultural institutions in NYC, namely the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Lincoln Center and other well known culture havens.

For the first time in its 187-year history, the New York-based National Academy will welcome photographers, video artists, and performance artists to its organization. A community of artists, students, museum-goers, and supporters of the arts, the National Academy had previously only allowed painters, sculptors, printmakers, and architects to be voted into membership. Known as National Academicians, each year since 1825 a select group of the country’s most celebrated artists are elected to become members of the Academy.

This year’s inductees include the video and performance artist Joan Jonas (b. 1936), photographer Cindy Sherman (b. 1954), and video artist Bill Viola (b. 1951). Twenty other newly elected visual artists and architects will join the Academy’s 300+ active members this year. After being inducted, each Academician presents the Academy Museum with a selection from their oeuvre. The National Academy Museum’s permanent collection currently includes over 7,000 works. Past and present National Academicians include Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), and Frank Gehry (b. 1929).

The National Academy also includes the Academy School, which offers studio-based classes. Over 30 faculty members lead courses and workshops in painting, drawing, sculpture, new media, video and photography, printmaking, mixed media, and art theory.

Members of the Los Angeles County of Museum of Art currently pay $400 a year for exclusive access at the institution. All of that is about to change as museum director, Michael Govan, announced that he will be raising annual fees for members to $1,000 a year. A $250-level museum membership must be purchased separately annually. The announcement has council members as well as art enthusiasts and professionals threatening to leave the institution.

While Govan stands behind his decision, some feel he is jeopardizing the support of smaller donors and will scare off younger people from becoming members. At a meeting for council members on Tuesday, November 27, Govan explained his decision, stating that the changes are part of a larger restructuring plan to simplify the museum’s system and make it more professional. Govan also plans to dismantle each of the ten museum council boards, leaving only a chairperson to assist the department curator and development staff.

The fee increase will go into effect in January for new members and in June for existing ones.

The Dallas Museum of Art announced today that it will nullify its $10 general admission fee, effective January 21, 2013. The museum will also launch an online rewards program that could even make membership free.

In recent years, many institutions have reversed their decision to charge visitors and are now free to the public. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Walters Museum of Art in Baltimore, and the Detroit Institute of the Arts have all decided that free admission will help their institutions become more widely accessible, which, in turn, will keep visitor numbers up.

While it appears that the aforementioned museums have started a trend, many institutions in major tourist destinations are not so quick to jump on the free entry bandwagon. In New York, the Museum of Modern Art charges $25 and the Guggenheim Museum charges $22. San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art, another major tourist attraction, charges $18. Other big-name museums that require visitors to pay are the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Carnegie Museum of Art.