This article is covers a number of interesting aspects. Gaza is in a situation where it has few museums & much of its heritage has been lost to collections in Israel, leading to the potential for many restitution requests in the future. More interesting though is the reasoning behind charging for admission – the British Museum always puts free entry as one of its top arguments in debates over the Elgin Marbles, but possibly Jawdat Khoudary is right – people don’t learn to value the heritage when they can see it for free. Certainly, many others have noted that free admission does tend to come at a price.

From:
Independent

The refuge that allows Gaza to reflect on past glories
By Donald Macintyre in Sudaniya, Gaza
Saturday, 9 August 2008

It may seem an odd dilemma in a territory where more than half of families live below an internationally defined poverty line, but Jawdat Khoudary is wondering whether there should be museum charges in Gaza.

As the owner and creator of the Strip’s first purpose-built archaeological museum, he has no doubt that the most prized patrons, the organised parties of schoolchildren already starting to flock to it, must come for free. And having sunk a small fortune – he won’t say how much – into building this elegant and air-conditioned space overlooking the Mediterranean just north of Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp, he certainly isn’t trying to make money from it. But the 48-year-old owner of one of Gaza’s biggest construction companies worries that if he doesn’t charge a couple of shekels for individual entry, Gazans may not realise the value of their heritage as much as he does.
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The British Museum regularly makes a virtue of the fact that the Elgin Marbles Can be seen “free of charge, seven days a week“. There are downsides to free museum admission though & in the end, there is a price to be paid for everything.

From:
The Times

June 1, 2008
Is there a price to pay for free art?
We love art now, especially when it’s free, but there is a price to pay for free art discovers our writer as he joins the crowds at London’s leading attractions
Bryan Appleyard

In Tate Modern, Simon Halberstam, a father of three, thinks for a moment, then says: “It’s better for them to stand in front of a urinal than stay at home with a Wii.” Marcel Duchamp’s ironic “ready-made” sculpture, Fountain, he’s saying, is superior as an educational tool to Nintendo’s enervating games console. And so Halberstam, with his friend Michael Rosehill and his two children, are spending the spectacularly wet bank holiday at the Tate.
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