Attracting young people to attend an exhibition is not an easy task as one has to deal with their existing
preferences and try to find a right combination of messages to increase the probability to attend an exhibition and
hopefully their propensity to pay more for the admission. In Europe, many students enjoy advantages of free or
deeply discounted admission to exhibitions. Americans might learn from this. It may turn out that the future of
museums must be in free admission. For museums to survive and thrive they may have to go back to a world
where exhibitions are paid for by advertisers, rather than by the consuming public or funded by a subscription
model, paid up front, rather than on an ‘as you go’ basis. Our data certainly suggest that this subscription model is
better; there is very little of a specific nature to create a burning passion in the young museum visitor.
