Come November, when the Museum of Modern Art* opens an exhibition on Tim Burton, director of Edward Scissorhands and Sweeney Todd, among other movies, it plans to try something I recommended here back in April: variable pricing.
The museum is calling its initiative “Tim Burton Tour Nights,” and it works this way: On certain nights during the show, which runs from November 22, 2009, to April 26, 2010, people can pay $75 per person for a one-hour “VIP group tour” after the museum closes to the public, and a reserved “preferred seat” at a screening of a Tim Burton film the same night. MoMA members get the same deal for $65. The tours are limited to 25 people, and reservations must be made in advance.
This is a good test — it changes almost nothing for the general public, which still gets to see the exhibition as usual during regular MoMA hours. Sure, some seats per screening are given over to premium tickets, but reserved seating is common for all kinds of performances at other places. So what?
Critics who think museums should be free all the time may blast MoMA for being elitist — I challenge them to find a better, more painless way to raise money.
For MoMA’s plan does have potential. The museum says it plans “an extensive film series spanning Burton’s 27-year career” during the five-month run of the show. Each sell-out night of private tours could yield from $1,625 to $1,875, depending on how many members buy tickets. I am not privvy to the budget, but I doubt this exhibit is cheap.
What’s in it? More than “700 rarely or never-before-seen drawings, paintings, storyboards, moving-image works, puppets, maquettes, costumes, and cinematic ephemera.” Again from MoMA:
The exhibition explores how Burton has taken inspiration from sources in pop culture and reinvented Hollywood genre filmmaking as an expression of personal vision, garnering him an international audience of fans and influencing a generation of young artists working in film, video, and graphics.
Burton’s filmography can be found on IMDB here, and his official site is here.
When the exhibition ends, I hope MoMA shares with other museums and the public how the plan worked and how much revenue it produced. If everyone understood the benefits of variable pricing, they’d be more open to it.
Photo Credit: Christmas, Courtesy MoMA
* I consult to a foundation that supports MoMA.