Even after the Metropolitan Museum of Art increased its recommended donation for adults to $20 from $15, a day at the museum is still one of the best deals in town. By which we mean, a snooze on the grass in Central Park is hard to beat at the price. But aside from such free pleasures, the Met is just hard to beat. Even after the latest increase, the suggested donation is in the ballpark of the mandatory admission fees charged by smaller local institutions like the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, or the Frick. The New York Times may get a kick out of encouraging people to try to get in by plunking down a donation of four bits, but most New Yorkers understand the value of the Met.

Unlike other New York institutions with lower general admissions charges, the donation at the Met also includes access to all of its special exhibitions.Come autumn, that will mean access in a single visit to special exhibitions featuring Whistler, Cassatt, Eakins, and Sargent (“Americans in Paris”), Tiffany (“Louis Comfort Tiffany and Laurelton Hall — An Artist’s Country Estate”), and Cézanne, van Gogh, Gaughin, Matisse, and Picasso (“Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde”). These exhibits alone arguably would justify a mandatory $20 fee, but for the voluntary donation the Met adds admission to its permanent collection.

Contrast that to the American Museum of Natural History, another magnificent New York institution, where the suggested donation is only $14 but visitors must pay extra for special exhibits, such as $7 for the current lizards display. The Neue Galerie is charging $50 for tickets to see the five paintings of its Klimt exhibit on Wednesday afternoons this summer. We’re going to join that line with pleasure, but for two fifth’s of the price of that ticket one could see at the Met 100 paintings as exciting. Feature what a terrific seat at a ball game costs and multiply it by the number of children in your party.Which is not to fault any of the other institutions for their own admissions charges. It’s just that the comparison is illuminating.

The Met shoulders enormous financial burdens to bring art to the public. Among the factors forcing the increase are costs for conservation and research, publications like exhibition catalogs not fully covered by the price paid by consumers, and insurance.The latter alone increased noticeably after September 11, 2001. The Met receives 11% of its operating support from the city government. The alternative to the Met’s approach would be to change this ratio, placing ever greater burdens on our overextended municipal government and on the taxpayers themselves. A publicly-funded National Gallery of Art in Washington actually had to cut short its Vermeer show when the government closed in 1995.

By supporting so much of its collection and operations with private giving, including the requested donations from visitors, the Metropolitan Museum has a better shot of offering patrons uninterrupted access. It gives free access to 100,000 school pupils each year and offers them free family passes to return with their parents and siblings. It sponsors free art education programs and preserves its collections for future generations. Rather than asking for $20 each time for frequent visitors, the museum offers, starting at $95, a membership that includes unlimited free admission, exhibition previews, a magazine, and shop discounts. For just $60 one can get unlimited free admission and a computer screensaver. And, in all cases, contemplate the world from the Temple of Dendur.