One of my great joys as a kid in the Washington DC area was visiting the Smithsonian. I loved wandering between the different museums during the course of a long day. Will that experience change if they begin charging admission to the various buildings?

The Smithsonian leaks free richness, the kind of palatial, spatial dripping wealth probably enjoyed by emperors who walked barefoot on such cool marble floors. Fattened by life, they no doubt listened to the same delicate trickle of waterfalls in indoor gardens and admired paintings by the masters.

But this kind of opulence is, in these museums, open to the common person. So you wander about the various Smithsonian facilities because you can. Because the museums are free. Open to anybody in the world. You wonder as you wander what kind of people come here in the middle of the day and what do they seek? Would they still come if it cost them a buck, as a member of Congress recently proposed? Simple math: With 25 million visitors a year, if you charged a dollar each for admission, you could raise $25 million for a great institution in need of cash. There are, after all, renovation projects to pay for, like the one at the National Museum of American History, which this fall is closing its doors for almost two years for major makeover.

But how would the experience of dropping in on one of the museums of the Smithsonian in the middle of a workday change if there were a cost attached?

An excellent discussion continues in the rest of the article.