Philadelphia Museum of Art to experiment with pay-what-you-wish tickets on Friday nights

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The Philadelphia Museum of Art is changing its admissions policy this spring and summer.

Customers can pay what they wish for tickets on Friday nights from April 10 to Sept. 4, Labor Day.

That window of time corresponds to the opening season of the museum’s major exhibition, “Nation of Artists,” pegged to America’s 250th anniversary. “Nation of Artists” is being touted as the largest-ever display of American art, including over 1,000 works spread across both the museum and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

The pay-what-you-wish policy is underwritten by the William Penn Foundation and the museum board chair Ellen Caplan and her husband Ron Caplan.

While the ticketing policy is currently scheduled to end on Labor Day 2026, the “Nation of Artists” exhibition continues until Labor Day 2027.

Director and CEO Daniell Weiss said the choice to pay what you wish will reduce some financial obstacles of entry to the museum.

“This summer will be a very big summer for Philadelphia. It is the semiquincentennial for the country, the 250th anniversary for the country. It’s also the sesquicentennial for the Museum, the 150th anniversary for us,” Weiss said. “It’s going to be a time when we want people to feel welcome to the museum, to come and to engage.”

The museum used to have a pay-what-you-wish policy on Friday nights but discontinued it in 2024 in favor of a reduced-admissions policy. The pay-what-you-wish policy was temporarily brought back in February on a trial basis for the final three weeks of the exhibition “Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100.” It proved successful as attendance increased 128% over the previous three weeks and overall ticket revenue increased 20%.

“I don’t know exactly what the average was that they paid, but it resulted in a net positive revenue result for us. Which is great,” Weiss said. “The museum has to find a way to fund its operations one way or the other. That’s part of what it means to live in the world and to be a functioning enterprise. But we also want people to come and not be held back.”

The museum will continue its longstanding policy of paying what you wish on the first Sunday of every month.

“The pay-what-you-wish program is how I was first introduced to the museum as a child,” Ellen Caplan said in a statement. “There’s no better way to turn 150 than to say ‘thank you’ to our city.”

Weiss, who stepped in as director and CEO on Dec. 1, used to be president and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. During his tenure, the Met eliminated its longstanding pay-what-you-wish policy, with the exception of residents of New York state and students of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Weiss said the pay-what-you-wish plan for the spring and summer may be continued beyond Labor Day, or he may try out other experiments in revenue generation.

“There are things that might work in Philadelphia that wouldn’t work in New York or Los Angeles. Every city is a little bit different,” he said. “I know what works in New York. What we want to do is adapt best practices nationally to what would work in Philadelphia.”