LASM’s prices up, hours reduced

• By CHANTE DIONNE WARREN
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Aug 4, 2009 - Page: 1B

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The Louisiana Art and Science Museum is closing an hour earlier and raising admission an extra $1 to cut down expenses and save programs, the museum’s executive director said.

“It’s a combination of several factors and loss of potential state funding. It’s also the cost of inflation as well as staying competitive,” said Carol Gikas, LASM president and executive director

Gov. Bobby Jindal discontinued the downtown riverfront museum’s funding of about $150,000 for both last year and this year, citing lawmakers’ failure to make the argument the museum has a regional impact.

Gikas said she plans to approach the state next year for funding and provide it with more information about the museum’s regional impact.

“Hopefully next year the administration will be more informed. We have worked hard in seeing that the greater Baton Rouge delegation of our legislators and EBR and surrounding parishes are informed and supportive of what we do, and we’ll work harder next year to see that the administration is informed about it,” she said.

An April 2009 economic impact study conducted by Dek Terrell, director of the LSU Division of Economic Development, estimates about $8.3 million in spending in East Baton Rouge Parish by non-East Baton Rouge Parish residents who visited the LASM museum in 2008, said Mike Anderson, chairman of LASM’s board of trustees.

“As a board member, we are extremely proud of the museum’s regional impact,” Anderson said.

Beginning Sept. 1, adult gallery fees will be raised from $6 to $7 and children and senior citizen fees will be raised from $5 to $6. All other general admission rates, including planetarium shows, will be raised a dollar. LASM member admission rates will remain the same.

The museum’s morning hours will remain the same from Tuesday through Friday and it will close an hour earlier beginning in September at 3 p.m. instead of 4 p.m., Gikas said. The museum will open on Sunday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., closing an hour earlier. She said the Saturday schedule will remain the same.

Gikas said the museum has not increased its fees since 2005. Comparable cities, including Alabama’s Mobile Museum of Art charge $10 for adults and $6 for students; Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson charges $5 for adults and $4 for senior citizens; Shreveport’s Sci-Port Museum charges $12 for adults and $9 for children. Sci-Port in Shreveport, which features a laser planetarium, IMAX theater and science, math and space exhibits, continued to receive its $150,000 in state funding this year.

Gikas said services will remain the same at the Baton Rouge museum, which features a planetarium, an IMAX theater and art, space and science exhibits.

About 214,000 people visit the museum each year, and about 109,000 of the visitors are school children.

“About 62 percent of those school children come from outside EBR parish,” she said.