The Metropolitan Museum of Art is discontinuing its colorful metal admission buttons. From subway tokens to Checker cabs, see the city’s bygone treasures.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that it would no longer be using its candy-colored admissions tags after this weekend. Beginning Monday, when the Met switches to a seven-day schedule, the tin buttons will be replaced by cost-cutting paper stickers, and with their loss New Yorkers will have gained yet another symbol of nostalgia. Introduced in 1971, the Met’s buttons were not only an elegant method for tracking who had paid the “recommended” $25 admission fee, they were also a badge of honor once you exited the museum—a sign that you got a little culture today. Even the Met’s director, Thomas P. Campbell, is wistful about the policy change. “I regret it slightly myself,” he told The New York Times. “One of my assistants has a whole rainbow of the colored buttons on her desk.”