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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Often, when an artwork in the UK comes up for sale, much is made about how it must be saved for the nation – to prevent it falling into the hands of a collector of museum abroad. When countries such as Greece request the return of their artefacts however, their statements are criticised as being purely nationalistic.

From:
Guardian

Tate chief attacks ‘save for the nation’ art policy
Fiachra Gibbons, arts correspondent
Wednesday November 12, 2003
The Guardian

Sir Nicholas Serota, the most powerful man in the museum world, dramatically broke ranks with his colleagues yesterday to challenge the idea that vast sums of money should be spent to stop important works of art leaving Britain.

The director of the Tate museums delivered a devastating indictment of the reflex to blindly save treasures “for the nation” when foreign collectors or museums try to buy them, a sacred cow of cultural policy until now.
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