I like to think of myself as more of a lover than a fighter. I frequently give up my seat on the subway to people who are not even that old or that pregnant. Once, I considered resuscitating a baby bird that had fallen from its nest, except that I couldn't quite wrap my mind around the logistics of raising it in my shoebox-sized apartment. But there remain a few situations that never cease to ignite a primal, violent rage in me. For instance, at the Barney's Warehouse Sale I will elbow a fellow shopper smack in the kidney with no feelings of remorse. Nothing, however, makes me angrier than when I go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and, deciding against all better judgment to forsake dinner, I hand over my final $9 to the craggy-faced docent ladies at the ticket counter only to find that old Miss Havisham is shooting laser beams of disapproval at me from her cloudy, Tiresian eyes.

But what's a respectable museumgoer with only gum wrappers in her wallet to do? Pay the entirety of the whopping $20 suggested admission fee? As it turns out, things are about to go from bad to worse — the Met has announced it's raising its suggested price from $20 to $25, effective July 1. According to the New York Times, Met director Thomas P. Campbell is justifying this cruel cost bump with the argument that post economic-downturn, visitors have been proffering less and less. Apparently, while in boomtimes the per capita contribution goes up
annually, in the past fiscal year it's plummeted a whole 16 cents. So, yes, people are paying less, and your plan is to raise the price — brilliant idea!

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"Since the average cost to the museum of each visitor is $40 we believe it is fair, and above all necessary, to increase recommended admission levels at this time," Mr. Campbell said in a statement, sounding quite logical even as my primordial fury fought to blind me to all reason.

The city hasn't been padding the Met coffers in the way that it used to, that's for certain. The Times reports that while in 2007 New York handed over $13.7 million to support the museum's operating budget, it only gave $10.6 million this year, and is proposing to only offer $5.4 million in 2012. Hence, the prices for senior citizens will also spike to $17 from $15, while students will be asked to pay $12 instead of $10. Children under 12 will be spared the indecency of trying to figure out who will break their allowance quarter into two dimes and a nickel, and which coin to offer as sacrifice to the surly gatekeepers of art — they still get in for free.

I love the Met. I think that people who have the $25 suggested donation in their fat, Italian leather wallets should fork it over, give more, even. But I also believe that if the museum is going to say it's charging me whatever it's comfortable for me to pay, they could at least pretend like they trust me to calculate that amount on my own. I don't want the Met to start charging a fixed fee like MoMA,
whose 2004 admission-hike (from $12 to $20) was worse than the
rent-increase experienced by tenants of the Apthorp after the
luxury-decontrol law passed in the early '90s. But I also don't want to find myself wracked with guilt before I'm even in the Temple of Dendur. 

I'll end this tirade with an anecdote. When I was a measly high school student — I was probably around 16 but looked all of 11 — I was taking a boy who I thought was dreamy to the Met. Anyway, my mother was a member of the museum, so I boldly took her card to the membership services desk and requested two shiny buttons. "This is not you," Old Lady River informed me evilly. I tried to explain the situation. She told me that if I could show her identification that proved that my last name was the same as my mother's, she might let me in. Of course, I couldn't do that, as my mother is a Modern Woman, and did not take my father's last name when they tied the knot. As I stormed off to the ticket booth, I yelled back to Mrs. Walrus Face that I was simply not going to pay any portion of the suggested price, as was my right. She, unfortunately, had moved on to torturing someone else.