City pays big to keep Museum running

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Whether or not art and culture is your thing KRQE News 13 has learned that we all are paying more to subsidize the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History than any other city cultural attraction.

While Albuquerque’s cultural attractions aren’t necessarily supposed to make money, the amount the city pays to subsidize this specific attraction is a hefty sum.

For every visitor at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History the city has to fork over around $24.

Some food for thought.

In addition to what visitors pay to go to the Zoo, the city pays another $9 per person to run it.  That’s about the same amount the city pays for each visitor at the Balloon Museum.

The Kimo appears to be the best deal for taxpayers.  That costs the city about $6 for each person who goes to see a show at the historic downtown theater.

John Soladay, Chief Operations Officer with the city, says the Art Museum has about 30 employees, is open more days and has more overhead than the other attractions.

“Art and history is an accredited museum that has some 30 thousand artifacts, 11 and 80 thousand pictures that we maintain,” Soladay tells News 13.

The Museum’s budget is $2.7 million, but only 121,000 people walked through it’s doors last year.

Soladay says the city posted the cost per visitor online as a performance measure to put out the information on the transparency website to help the staff improve the numbers.

The city is partially renovating the museum and designing new marketing plans to attract more viewers.

Since it only costs $3 for adults to get into the museum, it would not make sense to close the gap by raising ticket price.

Soladay says the city will wait to see if these efforts to attract visitors work before looking at a price hike.