May 23, 2025 - Culture
VMFA stays free as museum prices soar
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The one and only VMFA. Photo: Robert Knopes/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
The price of admission to art museums in some cites has been inching up to $20 or more in recent years.
Why it matters: Admission at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, right in the heart of Richmond, is completely free, 365-days a year.
Driving the news: The Denver Art Museum quietly raised prices by more than 20% recently, our colleagues at Axios Denver noticed this month.
- Denver's price hike to $22 followed surging admission prices at a half-dozen art museums in 2023, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, per The Art Newspaper.
- Art lovers hoping to get into those will have to fork over $30 — per person.
- Helping cover the cost of multi-million renovations and expansions at those museum drove most of those admission price increases, per reports.
Yes, but: VMFA is in the early stages of a $261 million expansion, the largest in its nearly 100-year history, and following its $150 million, 2010 addition.
- And the museum, which gets about a quarter of its funding from the state, will remain completely free.
The bottom line: Richmond is #blessed.