Another NY Institution Goes Way Of The Budget

The beloved metal tags you get with an admission to the Metropolitan Museum of Art are gone.  As of yesterday, the museum stopped using them.  The rising cost of metal and fewer and fewer manufacturers have made the buttons obsolete.  Now you get a paper sticker.

Having seen Chaos to Couture (I will get to that in a later post) on Friday, I was one of the last visitors to receive a robin's egg blue button.  According to the article in the NY Times, the color might actually be Mole, huh? The buttons were introduced a year after they enacted the suggested price policy in 1971.  According to the Times they replaced both paper and stick pins.  The buttons were a souvenir to the patron for her/his donation.  They were costing the museum about 3 cents per button, up from 2 cents a year ago.  The paper tickets will cost a penny each.  To cover the 1 million visitors a year, the museum would manufacture 1.6 million buttons a year and they were made by a local company in Chelsea.  In keep with the times, the new paper tickets will have space for corporate sponsors. 

Like the Ramones, CBGB's and subway tokens, New York no longer has the MET button.  

Friday's Button RIP