As the Metropolitan Museum of Art grapples with a $40 million lawsuit against its policy of intimidating the nice families with expensive cameras into paying stiff admission fees, a former museum employee says that he was personally charged with making sure guards did that scary neck-cracking thing whenever people attempted to enter without paying. “I arranged for security officers to forcibly remove the museum visitors who demanded entry without paying,” the Hero to the Common Man told the Post. “Their attitude toward the public is the public is a cash cow."
The former supervisor, who holds degrees from Yale and Fordham, said that employees "are trained and instructed to pressure and embarrass visitors into paying the stated admission fee" of $25 per person ("free" if you pay the Met money). Presumably they were also ordered to say "Personwhodoesn'tknowwhatFauvismissayswhat?" when they hand over those little flimsy buttons.
We have a pretty good idea of who the Post's source is, and have asked him to recount memorable episodes of ejection and for his idea of what a sensible admission policy would be. If the Secret Aesthetic Police haven't silenced him, we'll update when we hear back.
The Met continues to deny that they're doing anything wrong. Attorney for the plaintiffs, Michael Hiller, said the museum "was started as a public institution to bring art to the masses. What it has become is an elite tourist attraction that is really counter to its original purpose."
