01-08-2025
Brexit isn't to blame for the Tate's woes, wokery is
If in doubt, blame Brexit. This has been the go-to for every failing business, politician and cultural enterprise for the last decade. And, with the news that the Tate is suffering from embarrassingly low attendance figures, director Maria Balshaw has reached for the same old script. 'The combination of Brexit changing their educational and work opportunities and then Covid profoundly affecting the end of their studies and the way they choose to live their lives' is stopping European youngsters from coming, says Balshaw.
This blame game is telling for a number of reasons. For starters, the idea that Erasmus kids were what was holding Tate's attendance figures together is ludicrous – Brexit hasn't stopped youngsters from holidaying in the UK. Perhaps more revealing is the fact that Balshaw seems more concerned with attracting members of the European Union than addressing the nonchalance among punters from her own isle. Tate Modern has recently announced a slew of late openings to attract a Gen-Z audience. Museums having to masquerade as clubs to get the youth in is not a sign of good health.
But aside from the Remaniac whining that is so typical in arts circles, why are Tate's numbers so low? A clue might be found in the shake-up of another event in 2016 – not Brexit but the revamping of Tate Modern as a 'museum for the 21st century', along with its Switch House 10-floor extension. There was a conscious reorientation by former directors Nicholas Serota and Frances Morris towards a focus on the political – think decolonisation, deconstruction, and lots of woke little plaques. At one point, an accompanying explanation next to Tate Britain's early 17th-century Cholmondeley Ladies informed the public of a possible lesbian subtext, which might have caused alarm to the sisters who feature in the work. One section of the Tate extension called 'Performer and Participant' informs viewers that they will be 'directed by an artist and political activism'. For your average Goldsmiths student this might be an exciting opportunity, but most ordinary museum goers are there to see the great art – never mind the politics.
Perhaps Tate's failures are down to its own institutional cowardice. Over the years, both Tate Modern and Tate Britain have acted like museums who are embarrassed not only of their own collections but by their very own existence. The formerly famous Tate restaurant was not reopened after the pandemic thanks to criticism of the murals on the wall by Rex Whistler that included images of slave boys. Despite explanatory plaques, booklets and other apologetic scripts being produced around the mural for years, the museum decided that hungry members of the public simply couldn't be trusted to eat next to such a work. You can once more view them, but only in the context of an installation 'contextualising', ie condemning, the work.
Likewise, Sir Stanley Spencer's Resurrection, Cookham has been quietly filed away into storage after critics argued that he had used images from a 'National Geographic magazine' to paint the black figures, instead of using people he knew – despite the obvious lack of black people to befriend in 1920s Cookham.
Museums are not supposed to be entertainment factories, serving the political whims of colourfully dressed members of our cultural elite. These institutions seem to have forgotten their duty to curate and conserve art history in its entirety, without layering modern political fashions onto the past. In her book published last year, Gathering of Strangers, Balshaw insisted that 'we should not go back to the turn of the twentieth century and the Victorian civilising mission that motivated many museums', but instead look to the heroes of climate justice for direction as to which content should end up on the hallowed walls of our museums. A choice between the Victorians and Just Stop Oil? I know which exhibition I'd rather go to.
