Free entrance to museums may become a thing of the past as the recession and funding cuts bite, according to the head of The Art Fund.

London’s Natural History Museum
David Barrie, who campaigned to have charges scrapped in 2001, said it would be “a disastrous backward step” if charges were reintroduced. Admissions are continuing to rise [...]

Visitors view Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘Irises’ at the Getty centre. Photo: REUTERS
A spokesman for the Paul Getty Trust said its investment portfolio fell to $4.5 billion in the second half of 2008, down from $6 billion the previous year.

N.Y. Times Daniel Libeskind designed the new Contemporary Jewish Museum, which opened in San Francisco on Sunday. Lobby lights in the museum form four Hebrew letters that spell a word invoking paradise.

Look through the glass walls of a television studio at the Newseum — the much-heralded $450 million museum created by, for and about news acolytes, news reporters, newshounds, newsreaders, news watchers, newsmakers and news advocates that opens on Friday — and you get an imposing view of the Capitol. But that also means that from [...]

The Feigenbaum Hall of Innovation opened last weekend at the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Mass. The 3,000-square-foot exhibition space in Berkshire County’s oldest museum is explicitly devoted to local innovators.

Curators at the Detroit Institute of Arts used research to find out how long visitors spend at each exhibit. Gathering data about visitors has never been as important, or as sophisticated, to museums as it is now. “A zillion other things are competing for our leisure time,” said Ford Bell, president and chief executive of [...]