Chicago Day: To Be Free, or Not to Be Free?
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More than ever before, Chicago’s major museums are watching their imperiled bottom lines. A hard-nosed attitude of fiscal responsibility is readily apparent in some Chicago museums’ decisions not to participate in the sixth annual Chicago Day June 19, when the city is expected to be filled with hundreds of thousands of visitors attending the World Cup. Every year the mayor’s office asks the city’s museums to offer free admission for one day in an effort to expand awareness of these institutions among local residents and visitors; this year 27 museums have agreed to participate in the heavily publicized event. But seven others, specifically the Field Museum, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Shedd Aquarium, the Adler Planetarium, the Bicycle Museum of America at North Pier, the Museum of Holography, and the Chicago Children’s Museum, plan to collect their usual fees at the door. The Art Institute was also on that list until last Tuesday, when museum honchos reluctantly agreed to participate, and a well-placed source guessed that some of the seven other museums might end up following the Art Institute’s lead. But Museum of Science and Industry spokesman Jason Harris was clear about his institution’s main concern: “We really are looking at the bottom line; dollars are harder to come by.” Harris says MSI attendance for 1993 was down about 7.5 percent from 1992.
