New Tauranga Art Gallery director Alice Hutchison with the gallery's new tap-and-go $7 donation option.
The Tauranga Art Gallery has introduced an admission fee for international visitors in a bid to address its ongoing financial deficit.
The $7 charge only applies to people visiting the public gallery from outside of New Zealand, Tauranga City Council's new Finance, Audit and Risk Committee heard yesterday.
The Willow St gallery will remain free for New Zealanders, who will still be encouraged to give a koha (donation) when they visit. Children under 12 will get free entry.
The council-owned gallery has projected a $75,000 deficit for the current financial year.
Peter Anderson, chairman of the gallery's board of trustees, told the committee 22 per cent of the 81,200 visitors to the gallery in the 2017-18 year were from overseas.
Had the charge been in place in that period it would have brought in $125,000.
New Tauranga Art Gallery director Alice Hutchison with the gallery's new tap-and-go $7 donation option. Photo / George Novak
The gallery's new director Alice Hutchison, who started in February, said the charge was introduced on Saturday to coincide with the public opening of the Megaworld exhibition, which featured the work of Emmy and BAFTA award-winning US artist Gary Baseman and others.
Visitors were being welcomed at the front desk and asked for identification such as a driver's license to determine whether the fee applied.
Hutchison said the charge brought the gallery more in line with other New Zealand and international examples.
"International visitors expect to pay."
She said she had steered clear of introducing a charge for all visitors lest it discourage some from coming.
The price had been set at half of the $15 charge New Plymouth District Council introduced at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre in August for visitors from outside of the district.
In the six months to December, visitation to the centre dropped just under 40 per cent but ticket sales brought in an extra $60,000 in extra revenue, the Taranaki Daily News reported.
Hutchison told the Bay of Plenty Times the entry fee was one of several measures to improve the financial position of the gallery and ensure it was a sustainable commercial operation, not "a drain on the community".
"It was the most obvious thing we could do to address the deficit."
Other measures included increasing and improving the merchandise available for sale at the gallery and more stringent management and financial controls.
She said most people who visited the gallery already gave a koha.
Donating had been made easier with the introduction of a cashless "tap and go" Paywave card option, which took an automatic $7.
The gallery is a council-controlled operation and opened in 2007.
In the six months to December, it received funding of just over $470,000 from the Tauranga City Council and $17,000 from the Western Bay of Plenty District Council. Combined, it was about half of its total revenue.
