THE looming £7.50 charge for admission toYork Art Gallery will make it one of the most expensive civic art galleries in the country, a survey by The Press has revealed.

In Yorkshire, most large city art galleries such as the Hepworth in Wakefield, Cartwright Hall in Bradford, Leeds Art Gallery, Huddersfield Art Gallery and Doncaster Art Gallery are all free.

In the wider north, this is also true of Manchester Art Gallery, Newcastle’s Laing Art Gallery and the MIMA in Middlesbrough.

Of the civic art galleries in Yorkshire, only Scarborough Art Gallery currently has an admission charge, set at £3 – although this ticket is then valid for a year.

Elsewhere, Brighton Museum and Art Gallery also recently announced an admission charge, with fees for adults set at £5 and children at £2.80, but it is still currently free for Brighton residents, whereas the York Museums Trust plan to do away with free entry to the gallery, Castle Museum and Yorkshire Museum for those with a YorkCard, replacing it with a ‘membership scheme’.

York Art Gallery is run by the York Museums Trust, which has seen its subsidy from City of York Council cut by 60 per cent or almost £1 million since 2012. The trust proposes to end free admission to the gallery and Castle Museum and the Yorkshire Museum, but needs approval from the council tomorrow.

David Fleming, president of the Museums Association, said that local authorities were feeling a 'big cash squeeze' and would inevitably be thinking about how to earn some money.

“That’s exactly what will be happening all over the country and that’s exactly what they’ve been thinking about in York," he said.

However, Leeds Art Gallery and the Ferens Gallery in Hull, which are are free, have told The Press they have no plans to introduce charges.

York Museums Trust has said that, following the recent £8 million investment in the gallery, and with further funding cuts expected in the next few years, now is a good time to introduce charging.

Last year, York was visited by over nearly seven million people, with over 300,000 of those being tourists from overseas.

Mr Fleming has said admission fees may help fund York’s museums sustainably: "It might work in York. I doubt very much it would work in a place like Burnley or Rotherham. Those places are not full of tourists who are wanting to spend lots of money in museums.”

More than 350 people have signed a petition opposing charges for York, at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/public-art-gallery-should-be-free-of-charge/

The Press has reported plans for an "art strike" this Saturday, with residents invited to bring their own artworks to an open-air exhibition in Exhibition Square from 11am, to join the campaign for the continuation of free access to art. Yesterday Green Party councillor, Dave Taylor, said he had rejected a free tour of York Art Gallery in protest at the proposals.