The sorry decline of the Tate offers a brutal lesson to London's galleries

Evening Standard

The Tate galleries have lost 2.2 million visitors in the past five years. That’s a drop of more than a fifth since pre-pandemic times. Tate has been in discussions with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport about its financial position, with trustees acknowledging “uncertainty” over its ability to remain a going concern.You’d hope this would spark some reflection about whether the Tate, and museums more broadly, are truly engaging audiences in the way they once did. But instead, the discussion seems to have turned inward, focused more on curatorial ideology than the people walking through the doors.

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00:00It does seem that the organisations that have really embraced certain sort of ideological or politicised stance are suffering the most.

00:11And other arts, large arts organisations who have got more broad appeal to audiences are thriving.

00:19So I'm trying to sort of tease out, is there a point that we should be having some reflection as to why they may be losing so many people voting with their feet?

00:30I want to kind of sound the warning that by going down like divisive ideological stance, they're alienating the very people who should be supporting them.

00:41And that's the public and artists. And if the arts don't realise that they're alienating the people who support them, the politicians will step in.

00:53And I think there is a real threat to arts funding. You know, we've seen what's happened in America.

00:58The arts can be used as a political football and the arts need to respond to it with realism and to appeal to their public who are funding them.

01:11So I think there is a lot of pressure to make what it known because there are elements that don't work.

01:16Hopefully that's what I'm wondering for us.

01:17Thank you for listening in the show.

01:27I'm manière of showing you.

01:28Thank you for stopping by.

01:29I'm coming.

01:34Thank you for this.

01:36Bye.

01:40Bye.

01:41Bye.

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